cgo

Documentation

Overview

Cgo enables the creation of Go packages that call C code.

Usage:

go tool cgo [compiler options] file.go

The compiler options are passed through uninterpreted when invoking gcc to compile the C parts of the package.

The input file.go is a syntactically valid Go source file that imports the pseudo-package "C" and then refers to types such as C.size_t, variables such as C.stdout, or functions such as C.putchar.

If the import of "C" is immediately preceded by a comment, that comment, called the preamble, is used as a header when compiling the C parts of the package. For example:

// #include <stdio.h>
// #include <errno.h>
import "C"

CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS may be defined with pseudo #cgo directives within these comments to tweak the behavior of gcc. Values defined in multiple directives are concatenated together. Options prefixed by $GOOS, $GOARCH, or $GOOS/$GOARCH are only defined in matching systems. For example:

// #cgo CFLAGS: -DPNG_DEBUG=1
// #cgo linux CFLAGS: -DLINUX=1
// #cgo LDFLAGS: -lpng
// #include <png.h>
import "C"

Alternatively, CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS may be obtained via the pkg-config tool using a '#cgo pkg-config:' directive followed by the package names. For example:

// #cgo pkg-config: png cairo
// #include <png.h>
import "C"

The CGO_CFLAGS, CGO_CPPFLAGS, CGO_CXXFLAGS and CGO_LDFLAGS environment variables are added to the flags derived from these directives. Package-specific flags should be set using the directives, not the environment variables, so that builds work in unmodified environments.

Within the Go file, C's struct field names that are keywords in Go can be accessed by prefixing them with an underscore: if x points at a C struct with a field named "type", x._type accesses the field.

The standard C numeric types are available under the names C.char, C.schar (signed char), C.uchar (unsigned char), C.short, C.ushort (unsigned short), C.int, C.uint (unsigned int), C.long, C.ulong (unsigned long), C.longlong (long long), C.ulonglong (unsigned long long), C.float, C.double. The C type void* is represented by Go's unsafe.Pointer.

To access a struct, union, or enum type directly, prefix it with struct_, union_, or enum_, as in C.struct_stat.

As Go doesn't have support for C's union type in the general case, C's union types are represented as a Go byte array with the same length.

Go structs cannot embed fields with C types.

Any C function (even void functions) may be called in a multiple assignment context to retrieve both the return value (if any) and the C errno variable as an error (use _ to skip the result value if the function returns void). For example:

n, err := C.sqrt(-1)
_, err := C.voidFunc()

Calling C function pointers is currently not supported, however you can declare Go variables which hold C function pointers and pass them back and forth between Go and C. C code may call function pointers received from Go. For example:

package main
// typedef int (*intFunc) ();
//
// int
// bridge_int_func(intFunc f)
// {
//		return f();
// }
//
// int fortytwo()
// {
//	    return 42;
// }
import "C"
import "fmt"

func main() {
	f := C.intFunc(C.fortytwo)
	fmt.Println(int(C.bridge_int_func(f)))
	// Output: 42
}

In C, a function argument written as a fixed size array actually requires a pointer to the first element of the array. C compilers are aware of this calling convention and adjust the call accordingly, but Go cannot. In Go, you must pass the pointer to the first element explicitly: C.f(&x[0]).

A few special functions convert between Go and C types by making copies of the data. In pseudo-Go definitions:

// Go string to C string
// The C string is allocated in the C heap using malloc.
// It is the caller's responsibility to arrange for it to be
// freed, such as by calling C.free (be sure to include stdlib.h
// if C.free is needed).
func C.CString(string) *C.char

// C string to Go string
func C.GoString(*C.char) string

// C string, length to Go string
func C.GoStringN(*C.char, C.int) string

// C pointer, length to Go []byte
func C.GoBytes(unsafe.Pointer, C.int) []byte

Go functions can be exported for use by C code in the following way:

//export MyFunction
func MyFunction(arg1, arg2 int, arg3 string) int64 {...}

//export MyFunction2
func MyFunction2(arg1, arg2 int, arg3 string) (int64, *C.char) {...}

They will be available in the C code as:

extern int64 MyFunction(int arg1, int arg2, GoString arg3);
extern struct MyFunction2_return MyFunction2(int arg1, int arg2, GoString arg3);

found in _cgo_export.h generated header, after any preambles copied from the cgo input files. Functions with multiple return values are mapped to functions returning a struct. Not all Go types can be mapped to C types in a useful way.

Using //export in a file places a restriction on the preamble: since it is copied into two different C output files, it must not contain any definitions, only declarations. Definitions must be placed in preambles in other files, or in C source files.

Cgo transforms the input file into four output files: two Go source files, a C file for 6c (or 8c or 5c), and a C file for gcc.

The standard package construction rules of the go command automate the process of using cgo. See $GOROOT/misc/cgo/stdio and $GOROOT/misc/cgo/gmp for examples.

Cgo does not yet work with gccgo.

See "C? Go? Cgo!" for an introduction to using cgo: http://golang.org/doc/articles/c_go_cgo.html