Using Vagrant and cross-compiling Go (golang)

This is mostly a memo-to-self about how to write Go code in my Mac environment, compile it there for a Linux environment, and run it in a production-like Linux environment using Vagrant.

If using Homebrew...

My Go installation was home-brewed. If you used Homebrew to install Go, you need to make sure you did with the --cross-compile-common flag. If not, no problem, just run these:

$ brew update
$ brew upgrade go --cross-compile-common

Or do --cross-compile-all for all supported platforms.

If not using Homebrew...

If you're not using a Homebrew install of Go, you need to make Go support cross-compilation yourself. First you just need to tell Go to put the package files for the other architecture(s) in its pkg directory.

$ cd /usr/local/go/src

$ sudo GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=0 ./make.bash --no-clean

For GOOS, you can specify linux, darwin (for Mac), windows, and freebsd. For GOARCH, you can specify amd64, 386 (for 32-bit), and arm. As of Go 1.1, cgo is disabled by default, so the CGO_ENABLED part isn't necessary if you're setting it to 0, but to enable it you'll need to set it to 1.

Cross-compile your Go program

Once the make is finished, you can change into your Go program's directory and build or install like this:

$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o myprogram.linux64 prog.go

myprogram.linux is what I'm calling the output file in this case to remind me that the binary is for 64-bit Linux systems. For Windows, you'd want to call it something ending in .exe. Finally, prog.go is the name of my source file.

You can also do an install instead of just a build using the same technique.

Set it up with Vagrant

Coming soon.

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Install PECL extensions with Homebrewed PHP on Mac OS X Mountain Lion

I needed to use the HTTPRequest class that comes as a PECL extension to PHP. This was easier than I thought. If you followed my instructions for installing PHP with Homebrew, then installing the PECL extensions should be even easier. Here's how:

Open up the Terminal and do:

$ pecl list-all

just as a sanity check to make sure you have PECL installed from your Homebrew installation of PHP. You will see a list of all available PECL packages, and, potentially after some "Warnings" from bugs in the PEAR code, you'll notice that "pecl/pecl_http" is in the list.

Before you can install anything with pecl, you need autoconf. It helps to build in the environment with which we're working. Just do:

$ brew install autoconf

Then install your favorite PECL extension (in my case, pecl_http):

$ pecl install pecl_http

Then a whole bunch of code garbage will fly past the screen. In a minute or two, some config options will appear. Press "return" to accept the defaults in brackets. When it's finished, you'll know.

If you got a fatal error during install, try running under sudo. If you still get an error, wait a day or two and maybe they'll push a bug fix?

Then just restart your web service (I just reboot my computer) and you're done!

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Running Inkscape in Mac OS X Mountain Lion (finding X11)

OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) doesn't come with X11 (an X.org window server) installed like previous versions do. But getting Inkscape to run is still very easy.

Download the latest XQuartz and install it.

Next time you run Inkscape, it will ask you, "Where is X11?" It probably won't be in that list, so browse for it in your "Applications" folder, then go inside "Utilities" and choose XQuartz.

Then give it maybe several minutes to run the first time. And there you have it!

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