What's the proper way to cross-compile Go snaps?

snapcraft
1

Go natively supports cross-compiling. However, when I run snapcraft snap --target-arch=arm64, the output can be ran on amd64, which means cross-compiling isn’t that easy in Snapcraft.

I found out that using --destructive-mode made the build be done on the host machine instead of inside a container. Here’s how I managed to cross-compile in Go.

#!/bin/sh

snapcraft clean --destructive-mode
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=386      snapcraft snap --target-arch=i386     --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_i386.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64    snapcraft snap --target-arch=amd64    --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_amd64.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm      snapcraft snap --target-arch=arm      --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_arm.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64    snapcraft snap --target-arch=arm64    --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_arm64.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips     snapcraft snap --target-arch=mips     --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_mips.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips64   snapcraft snap --target-arch=mips64   --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_mips64.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mips64le snapcraft snap --target-arch=mips64le --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_mips64le.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=mipsle   snapcraft snap --target-arch=mipsle   --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_mipsle.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=ppc64    snapcraft snap --target-arch=ppc64    --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_ppc64.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=ppc64le  snapcraft snap --target-arch=ppc64le  --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_ppc64le.snap
snapcraft clean --destructive-mode permaweb-host; env GOOS=linux GOARCH=s390x    snapcraft snap --target-arch=s390x    --destructive-mode --output build/permaweb-host_s390x.snap

Buuut that’s plain ugly and it installs other-arch stuff from gcc on my machine.

Is there a better way to cross-compile Go apps that actually works?

2

You could push your code to github and then use the build service which will create snaps for 32-bit and 64-bit x86 and arm, and s390x and ppc. Visit build.snapcraft.io for more details.

3

Another option would be to exercise the beta “remote build” option in snapcraft. The details are at Preview: Snapcraft remote build

4

There are a few issues with cross-compiling with snapcraft 3.X and using bases. See my reply at Cross compile snap on amd64 to arm for a more thorough explanation, however it does seem that using --destructive-mode is a sufficient workaround for your use case.

For the time being, I’d recommend going with one of the options that @popey mentioned.