Go build
Posted on :: Updated on :: go

Cross compilation

env GOOS=target-OS GOARCH=target-architecture go build package-import-path

where target-os can be: linux, darwin, android, windows, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd, dragonfly, plan9
where target-architecture can be: arm, arm64, amd64

Static build

Using static build, go skips linking to libc/musl libraries. Instead implements it's own library calling syscall directly.

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -a -ldflags '-extldflags "-static"' .

Go always builds binaries with versioning

If you run go build from a git repository, it versions the binary by default.

$ go version -m gmail2gullak | grep vcs
        build   vcs=git
        build   vcs.revision=a952a27dab46dfe460bb209a9b39a1bae6b15ffd
        build   vcs.time=2026-04-24T12:08:34Z
        
$ go version gmail2gullak
gmail2gullak: go1.25.0

This also prints which go toolchain was used to build the binary.

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