How to cross-compile Go programs for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Programs written in Go can easily be compiled for a wide variety of target operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux by using the GOARCH and GOOS environmental variables. These represent the compilation architecture and the name of the target operating system respectively, and are set to your host compilation architecture (GOHOSTARCH) and operating system (GOHOSTOS) by default.

You can use the go env command to view the values of these variables on your machine:

$ go env
...
GOARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
...

Compile for Windows

Here’s the command you need to run to compile your Go project for a 64-bit Windows machine:

$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o bin/app-amd64.exe app.go

In this scenario, GOOS is windows, and GOARCH is amd64 indicating a 64-bit architecture. If you need to support a 32-bit architecture, all you need to do is change GOARCH to 386.

$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build -o bin/app-386.exe app.go

Compile for macOS

The GOARCH values for Windows are also valid for macOS, but in this case the required GOOS value is darwin:

# 64-bit
$ GOOS=darwin GOARCH=amd64 go build -o bin/app-amd64-darwin app.go

# 32-bit
$ GOOS=darwin GOARCH=386 go build -o bin/app-386-darwin app.go

Compile for Linux

To build your Go program for Linux, use linux as the value of GOOS and the appropriate GOARCH value for your target CPU architecture:

# 64-bit
$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o bin/app-amd64-linux app.go

# 32-bit
$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=386 go build -o bin/app-386-linux app.go

Other operating systems and CPU architectures

Go supports a lot more OS and CPU architecture combinations than what I’ve described above, but these are the most used ones. If you need to compile for ARM, Android, Web Assembly, or other targets, please refer to the Go docs to see the combinations of GOOS and GOARCH that are available to you.

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

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