aqua supports building tools with Go

Original Post: https://aquaproj.github.io/blog/2022/05/30/support-building-go-tools

aqua is a CLI Version Manager written in Go.

https://aquaproj.github.io/

In this post, I describe the feature introduced from aqua v1.7.0.

From v1.7.0, aqua supports building tools written in Go when they are installed.

For example, mitchellh/gox doesn't provide built binaries, so you have to build it yourself.

https://github.com/mitchellh/gox#installation

To install Gox, please use go get. We tag versions so feel free to checkout that tag and compile.

So it was difficult for aqua to support gox.

But from v1.7.0, aqua has introduced a new package type named go to support these tools.
When packages of the type go are installed, GitHub Repository archives (tarball) are downloaded and unarchived, and binaries are built by go build command.
To run go build, Go is required. In my understanding, we can run go build safely because any malicious external commands aren't run in go build.

Usage

The usage of go type packages are exactly the same as other type packages.

e.g.

$ aqua init
$ aqua g -i mitchellh/gox
$ cat aqua.yaml
---
# aqua - Declarative CLI Version Manager
# https://aquaproj.github.io/
registries:
- type: standard
  ref: v2.19.0 # renovate: depName=aquaproj/aqua-registry
packages:
- name: mitchellh/gox@v1.0.1

$ aqua i
INFO[0000] create a symbolic link                        aqua_version=1.9.0 env=darwin/arm64 link_file=/Users/shunsukesuzuki/.local/share/aquaproj-aqua/bin/gox new=aqua-proxy package_name=mitchellh/gox package_version=v1.0.1 program=aqua registry=standard registry_ref=v2.19.0
INFO[0000] download and unarchive the package            aqua_version=1.9.0 env=darwin/arm64 package_name=mitchellh/gox package_version=v1.0.1 program=aqua registry=standard registry_ref=v2.19.0
INFO[0000] building Go tool                              aqua_version=1.9.0 env=darwin/arm64 exe_path=/Users/shunsukesuzuki/.local/share/aquaproj-aqua/pkgs/go/github.com/mitchellh/gox/v1.0.1/bin/gox file_name=gox go_build_dir=/Users/shunsukesuzuki/.local/share/aquaproj-aqua/pkgs/go/github.com/mitchellh/gox/v1.0.1/src/gox-1.0.1 go_src=. package_name=mitchellh/gox package_version=v1.0.1 program=aqua registry=standard registry_ref=v2.19.0
go: downloading github.com/hashicorp/go-version v1.0.0
go: downloading github.com/mitchellh/iochan v1.0.0

Please see the log of aqua i. You can confirm that gox is built.

Benefit

• Support installing tools that no binary is provided
• Pin the tool version
• Change the tool version per project
• Update tools by Renovate

Specify a commit sha instead of a tag

Some tools aren't tagged properly, or there is too much difference between the latest tag and the latest default branch.
In that case, you can also specify a commit sha as a version instead of a tag.

e.g. aqua.yaml

registries:
- type: standard
  ref: v2.19.0
packages:
- name: mitchellh/gox
  version: 8c3b2b9e647dc52457d6ee7b5adcf97e2bafe131 # Specify commit sha

Can we specify latest like go install?

As you know, go install supports specifying latest.

e.g.

$ go install github.com/google/wire/cmd/wire@latest

On the other hand, aqua doesn't support specifying latest because aqua is CLI Version Manager.
You must specify the version strictly.

Example tools supported by package type go

In the release of aqua-registry v2.19.0, aqua-registry has supported the following go type packages.

• golang/tools/gopls: Go language server
• google/wire: Compile-time Dependency Injection for Go
• katbyte/terrafmt: Format terraform blocks embedded in files
• mitchellh/gox: A dead simple, no frills Go cross compile tool
• anqiansong/github-compare: A Command-line statistics tool to compare the GitHub repositories

Conclusion

In this post, I've described the feature introduced from aqua v1.7.0.
From v1.7.0, aqua supports building tools written in Go when they are installed.
This feature is powerful and changes the management of Go tools that don't provide binaries.

Reference

• https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua/releases/tag/v1.7.0
• https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua-registry/releases/tag/v2.19.0
• https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua-registry/pull/3713
• https://aquaproj.github.io/docs/reference/registry-config#go-package
• https://zenn.dev/shunsuke_suzuki/scraps/7e8ac509fe39bd (Japanese)

Comments

[David J Eddy]

My current organization just adopted Aqua at my suggestion. Takes a little of effort to grok the process to add packages to the registry but once you understand it, wow, so much nicer workflow than manually installing dozens of tools.

Being able to build go binaries is super cool!

The blind spot is supporting language switchers like goenv, pyenv, rubyenv, etc. Would be super awesome to see Aqua support this additional class of tooling.

Keep up the effort! We are loving the tool.