Deploy and build my go app on my server

Question

I'm totaly new to go (it looks fabulous btw).

So I want to build a "web-"app in go with the revel framework. The problem is I code on my mac (os : darwin, arch : amd64) and I want to deploy the app on my server (os : ubuntu 12.04, arch : amd64). I "go get" revel in local (so bin/revel it's a: Mach-O 64-bit executable) which is non executable on my server.

For now when I push (with git), I've got a post-receive script to build the app (revel build myapp /path/to/deploy). Before I've tried to "go get" revel on my server, but it failed too.

It's not working, I could understand why, but I don't have any idea how to get a workable workflow :

1. Code on my mac
2. Push my code (with git)
3. Build the app on the server

PS: I've read http://blog.gopheracademy.com/auto-deploy-revel-site, http://revel.github.io/manual/deployment.html as well as articles about cross-compilation)

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this helps.. but here goes..

Your exact situation is what I am currently doing daily whilst I develop my first proper web app in Go. I develop on both a Windows laptop (whilst bored at work.. I'm a .NET developer at my workplace!) and my Mac at home. I then deploy it to an Ubuntu server hosted on Digital Ocean.

My workflow is:

• Make any changes.
• Commit to repository (BitBucket)
• Pull from repo (wherever that may be - e.g, on my Ubuntu server)
• go build the code in place on the server
• go get any libraries that it complains about which I don't have on the server (for example, gorilla/mux wasn't on the server today so I just ran that)
• go build again (if applicable)

..then just run it on the server.

When starting with this workflow (which I am still trying to perfect with bash scripts, etc ...) I found that a consistent GOPATH across environments really helps.

For example, my GOPATH on each machine is:

• Windows: C:\GOPATH
• Mac: ~/go-code/
• Linux: /home/simon/go-code/

Each of them have exactly the same structure:

• $GOPATH
  • src
    • github.com/
      • gorilla/
      • revel/
      • etc.../
    • Simon
      • WebApp1 <--- git repo
        • .git
        • src
      • WebAPp2
      • WebApp3

...etc. This greatly simplifies the entire thing and is what allows me to develop across 3 environments seamlessly.

I am still getting used to Go and this setup (being a .NET developer at my core) - but it seems to be doing the trick for now.

Answer 2

The simple, easy to test way is to cross-compile a Linux amd64 binary on your Mac and push the binary over to your server using scp/Fabric/other tool of choice here. There's no need to then fetch deps (and risk breaking things), build anything on your server: you just ship a binary.

Option 1: http://dave.cheney.net/2012/09/08/an-introduction-to-cross-compilation-with-go - and then build the binary using go-linux-amd64 build or by setting the environmental variables directly (as per the below option).

Option 2: install Go using Homebrew brew install go --cross-compile-common and then run GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build - or use the -o flag to specify a different output filename. I typically output mine as myapp-linux so it doesn't overwrite the platform native binary.