go build

go build will compile a program into an executable file.

To demonstrate, we will use a simple Hello World example main.go:

package main

import fmt

func main() {
    fmt.Println("Hello, World!")
}

To compile the program run: go build main.go

build creates an executable program, in this case: main or main.exe. You can then run this file to see the output Hello, World!. You can also copy it to a similar system that doesn’t have Go installed, make it executable, and run it there.

Specify OS or Architecture in build:

You can specify what system or architecture to build by modifying the env before build:

$ env GOOS=linux go build main.go # builds for Linux
$ env GOARCH=arm go build main.go # builds for ARM architecture

Build multiple files

If your package is split into multiple files and the package name is main (that is, it is not an importable package), you must specify all the files to build:

$ go build main.go assets.go # outputs an executable: main

Building a package

To build a package called main, you can simply use:

$ go build . # outputs an executable with name as the name of enclosing folder