Bitbake / Yocto recipes for cross compiling golang program

For compiling simple golang helloworld program as part of yocto build framework, we need to download meta-golang from https://github.com/madisongh/meta-golang and use this meta layer along with poky to build our written bitbake recipes for cross compilation of golang program.

PLEASE NOTE: Starting with OE-Core ‘rocko’ (Yocto Project 2.4), Go support is available directly in OE-Core, and meta-golang is no longer under active development.

For Yocto 2.4 and Later

$ git clone git://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core
$ cd openembedded-core/
$ git checkout -b thud origin/thud

For Yocto 2.3 and Earlier

$ git clone https://github.com/madisongh/meta-golang.git
$ cd meta-golang

Now, we need to create files with following directory structure as,

$ tree recipes-devtools/examples/
recipes-devtools/examples/
├── files
│ └── helloworld.go
├── go-examples.inc
└── go-helloworld_0.1.bb

1 directory, 3 files

Now, lets create those files as below,

$ vim recipes-devtools/examples/files/helloworld.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        fmt.Println("Hello, world !")
}
$ vim recipes-devtools/examples/go-examples.inc
DESCRIPTION = "This is a simple example recipe that cross-compiles a Go program."
SECTION = "examples"
HOMEPAGE = "https://golang.org/"

DEPENDS = "golang-cross-arm"

export GOARCH="arm"

FILESEXTRAPATHS_prepend := "${THISDIR}/files:"

LICENSE = "MIT"
LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://${COMMON_LICENSE_DIR}/MIT;md5=0835ade698e0bcf8506ecda2f7b4f302"

S = "${WORKDIR}"
$ vim recipes-devtools/examples/go-helloworld_0.1.bb
require go-examples.inc

SRC_URI += " \
  file://helloworld.go \
"

do_compile() {
  go build helloworld.go
}

do_install() {
  install -d "${D}/${bindir}"
  install -m 0755 "${S}/helloworld" "${D}/${bindir}"
}

Now, once you integrate this meta-golang with poky, you will be able to compile this simple go language program using bitbake as,

$ bitbake go-helloworld

You may also like to read lot of information about Go Language here. and Yocto Information here

4 thoughts on “Bitbake / Yocto recipes for cross compiling golang program”

  1. Thanks, this information was very helpful for a project I am working on. I just had one minor problem. In my own recipe I had to use “go-cross-arm” instead of “golang-cross-arm” in the DEPENDS assignment (I’m using Yocto version Rocko).

    Reply

  2. I am currently doing a project using Yocto 2.7 (Warrior) and I’ve found that the “DEPENDS” statement has changed yet again. Now the dependency is simply “go”.

    Reply

    • I was too hasty in my previous reply. In the end I had to make a few changes when working with Yocto version 2.7:

      I removed the DEPENDS statement (no go-cross-arm or go).
      I added “inherit go” to include the Go class.
      I modified the do_compile to use a variable from the file go.bbclass to specify the Go compiler executable.
      I had to add a path to the working directory in the compile statement because the Go compiler was accessing ${S}/build and not ${S}.

      For example:

      do_compile() {
      ${GO} build -o ${S}/helloworld ${S}/helloworld.go
      }

      I hope this helps anybody stuck trying to get a similar recipe to work.

      Reply

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