Hands-On High Performance with Go

Cgo – writing C in Go

Cgo is a library that is built into the standard library of Go that allows users to invoke calls to underlying C programs in their Go code. Cgo is often used as a delegator for things that are currently coded in C but don't have equivalent Go code written.

Cgo should be used sparingly and only when there isn't an equivalent Go library available for a system. Cgo adds a few limitations to your Go programs:

• Needless complexity
• Difficulty troubleshooting
• Added complexity of building and compiling C code
• Much of Go's tooling is not available for use in Cgo programs
• Cross-compiling doesn't work as expected or at all
• The complexity of C code
• Native Go calls are much faster than Cgo calls
• Slower build times

If you can (or ...