Static Binaries for Cgo Programs With Zig Cc

Here's a previous post where I talk about how to use Alpine Linux to create static binaries for Go programs that use cgo.

But that involves building in a docker container(if you don't have a machine with Alipne on it).

In this post I'll describe a easier way using zig cc which has the advantage of working directly on your machine.

Install Zig

wget https://ziglang.org/download/0.9.1/zig-linux-x86_64-0.9.1.tar.xz
tar xf zig-linux-x86_64-0.9.1.tar.xz
ln -s $(pwd)/zig-linux-x86_64-0.9.1/zig /usr/local/bin/

Build your program

CC='zig cc -target x86_64-linux-musl' go build

This works out-of-the-box on Go 1.18, on older versions there may be some issues.

If x86_64 is not the CPU architecture you want, run zig targets | grep linux-musl to see all supported architectures.