How do I create an executable from Golang that doesn't open a console window when run?

Question

I created an application that I want to run invisibly in the background (no console). How do I do this?

(This is for Windows, tested on Windows 7 Pro 64 bit)

Answer 1

The documentation found online says I can compile with something along the lines of,

go build -ldflags -Hwindowsgui filename.go

But this gives an error: unknown flag -Hwindowsgui

With more recent (1.1?) versions of the compiler, this should work:

go build -ldflags -H=windowsgui filename.go

When I continued searching around I found a note that the official documentation should be updated soon, but in the meantime there are a lot of older-style example answers out there that error.

Answer 2

Using Go Version 1.4.2

 go build -ldflags "-H windowsgui" 

From the Go docs:

go build [-o output] [-i] [build flags] [packages]

-ldflags 'flag list' arguments to pass on each 5l, 6l, or 8l linker invocation.

• go build documentation
• ldflags docs