Go is portable, until it isn't
4 days ago
- #Cross-platform
- #Systemd
- #Go
- Go was chosen for building a portable server monitoring agent due to its compiled nature, garbage collection, and Goroutines for concurrency.
- Early development was straightforward with Go's rich ecosystem, using libraries like gopsutil for cross-platform metrics collection.
- Challenges arose with systemd journal log support, requiring dynamic linking to systemd's C API, complicating builds across different systems.
- Build constraints emerged, such as needing specific systemd libraries per architecture and issues with glibc vs. musl on different Linux distributions.
- Despite initial assumptions of effortless portability, the team adapted by using GitHub Actions for multi-architecture builds, maintaining the goal of small, self-contained binaries.