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Zig Makes Go Cross Compilation Just Work

Loris Cro on January 24, 2021

See also the followup post: https://zig.news/kristoff/building-sqlite-with-cgo-for-every-os-4cic For the last couple of months I worked on a redes...

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fufuu • Aug 18 '21 • Edited

I run this command to cross compile from window to linux but it doesn't work.
go version go1.17 windows/amd64
$ env CGO_ENABLED=1 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CC=zig cc -target x86_64-linuxCXX=zig c++ -target x86_64-linux` go build

output :
zig: error: no input files
zig: error: no input files

Loris Cro • Aug 18 '21 • Edited

Turns out the required patch did not land in Go 1.17 so you will have to use the workaround still, sorry! I've updated the article.

dosgo • Aug 19 '21

I developed a small tool to automatically judge the compilation target based on the GOOS GOARCH environment.
github.com/dosgo/zigtool

Robert • Jul 17 '22 • Edited

Does this work on M1?

Meghan (she/her) • Jan 25 '21

Woah! The more I learn about what Zig is capable of, the more it continues to amaze me.

Gobro • Aug 25 '21

Does this support cross compiling from linux to darwin? I can't make it work.
I followed your script workaround, except I swapped -target x86_64-linux with x86_64-macos.

I run:
GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=1 GOOS=darwin CC="zcc" CXX="zxx" go build -buildmod
e=c-shared -o test.dll

And I get the error:
/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64/link: running zcc failed: exit status 1
warning: unsupported linker arg: -headerpad
warning: unsupported linker arg: 1144
warning: unsupported linker arg: --compress-debug-sections=zlib-gnu
Cannot open /tmp/go-link-029541769/go.o: bad relocation (no atom found for defined symbol) in section TEXT/text (r_address=5024, r_type=1, r_extern=1, r_length=2, r_pcrel=1, r_symbolnum=620)
error: FileNotFound

Loris Cro • Aug 31 '21

Generally speaking, yes, Zig can also crosscompile for macOS. You might have encountered a bug in Zig or maybe it's a problem related to the dll file you're providing (IIRC ARM M1 macs need position independent code, for example).

I recommend trying with a recent build of Zig (you can get nightlies from the official website) and if it's still broken there, then open an issue on GitHub.

Alvaro Martin • May 12 '22

Hi, I am running all the commands above.
Process:
brew install zig
added zip dir to path
building docker image (linux/amd64) of go1.18.2-alpine3.14 (so same as the example, with go 1.18 or above) on a macbook m1 machine.

RUN CGO_ENABLED=1 GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CC="zig cc -target x86_64-linux" CXX="zig c++ -target x86_64-linux" \
go build --tags extended -ldflags="-w -s" -o app.go

Getting this error: