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Sign UpContainer image for building Go applications.
Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.
For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev
:
Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION
placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.
Where possible, the Go Chainguard Image is built for compatibility with the Docker official image for Golang.
Unlike most other Chainguard images, the Go image contains a shell; namely, Bash. The reason for this is that this image is meant to be used as a build image, not a runtime image. The Go binary itself isn't very useful, so the Go Chainguard image contains Bash, along with tools like make
and gcc
, to allow users to build binaries.
The Go Chainguard Image uses the glibc
implementation of the C standard library, while the Alpine version of the Golang official Docker Image uses musl
. See our article on glibc vs. musl on Chainguard Academy for an overview of the differences between these implementations.
When using the Chainguard Go image, we advise to use shared linking and the glibc-dynamic runtime
image as static linking of C/C++ code can often create dark matter and invade scanners. As an alternative, we recommend using the static
image as the runtime image, as it still provides CA certs for TLS. If using go-msft-fips
, we recommend using glibc-openssl-fips
.
The examples in this README recommend executing Go binaries from one of our runtime Chainguard Images, such as the glibc-dynamic
or static
Chainguard Images. If using the static
Chainguard Image, make sure to build your Go binary with static linking. In most cases, this requires running CGO_ENABLED=0 go build
when building the binary. If dynamic linking is needed, use the glibc-dynamic
Chainguard Image or the Go Chainguard Image to run your application.
In Go 1.20, we default to using the new GODEBUG
settings of tarinsecurepath=0
and zipinsecurepath=0
. These can be disabled by clearing the GODEBUG
environment variable, or by setting them to 1
.
Learn more about these settings in the Go release notes.
The following build demonstrates a command line application with support for flags and positional arguments. The application prints a modifiable greeting message and provides usage information if the wrong number of arguments are passed by a user or the user passes an unrecognized flag.
First, create a project folder and change the working directory to that folder:
Next, ,write a file defining our Go CLI application (main.go
:
Create a go.mod` file to list dependencies:
Write a Dockerfile
to define our image build:
The Dockerfile
uses a multi-stage build approach, compiling the application using the go
Chainguard Image, then copying the binary to the static
Chainguard Image for execution. Note that the static
image requires that the Go binary be statically linked—if your application requires dynamic linking, consider using the glibc-dynamic
Chainguard Image for your runtime (see the second example in this README).
Build the image, tagging it go-greeter
:
Run the image:
You should see output similar to the following:
You can also pass in arguments that will be parsed by the Go CLI application:
This will produce the following output:
The application will also share usage instructions when prompted with the --help
flag or when invalid flags are passed.
Because we used the static
Chainguard Image as our runtime, the final image only requires a few megabytes on disk:
The final size, 3.5055M
, is orders of magnitude smaller than it would be running the application using a Go image. However, if your application is dynamically linked to shared objects, consider using the glibc-dynamic
Chainguard Image for your runtime or take extra steps to build your Go binary statically.
The following build demonstrates an application that's accessible by HTTP server. The application renders a simple message that changes based on the URI.
First, create a project folder and change the working directory to that folder:
Next, write a main.go
file defining our web application:
Next, write a go.mod
file listing dependencies:
Write a Dockerfile
to define our image build:
The Dockerfile
uses a multi-stage build approach, compiling the application using the go
Chainguard Image, then copying the binary to the glibc-dynamic
Chainguard Image to serve.
Build the image, tagging it greet-server
:
Run the image:
Visit http://0.0.0.0:8080/ using a web browser on your host machine. You should see the following:
Changes to the URI will be routed to the application. Try visiting http://0.0.0.0:8080/Chainguard%20Customer. You should see the following output:
The application will also share version information at http://0.0.0.0:8080/version.
If you're building a web application with Go, consider the nginx Chainguard Image for use as a reverse proxy.
Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.
In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest
contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.
The main features of Chainguard Containers include:
For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev
variant.
Although the -dev
container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev
variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.
To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.
In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.
This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.
Chainguard container images contain software packages that are direct or transitive dependencies. The following licenses were found in the "latest" version of this image:
Apache-2.0
BSD-2-Clause
BSD-3-Clause
CC-BY-4.0
GCC-exception-3.1
GPL-2.0
GPL-2.0-only
For a complete list of licenses, please refer to this Image's SBOM.
Software license agreementA FIPS validated version of this image is available for FedRAMP compliance. STIG is included with FIPS image.