How to deploy a Go program on amazon ec2 without compiling it on ec2?

Question

I am looking for a way to deploy the go binary on amazon ec2. Currently all the tutorials I have found (1, 2) are explaining how to move the go sources on ec2 and to compile them there.

This is not what I am looking for for a couple of reasons. Among them:

• I do not want to copy all the sources
• I do not want to install irrelevant binaries (go compiler and other things)

In my opinion this is unnecessary because go has an ability to cross-compile binaries. I think that is is better to build a binary locally and to upload it on ec2.

Am I missing something here, are there any hidden pitfalls with my approach or is there a better way?

P.S. if this question is better suited for serverfault, please let me know or move it there.

Answer 1

You are right. One of the selling points of Go is cross-compiling into a single binary file. It's better to compile at localhost then copy it to your server.

$ GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 go build -o my_app .
$ scp my_app ec2@ip:~