OP mentioned that the pure-Go version is ~6 times slower, so the cgo calling overhead is clearly made up for by C. Also, I've heard that sqlite is the rare piec

OP mentioned that the pure-Go version is ~6 times slower, so the cgo calling overhead is clearly made up for by C. Also, I've heard that sqlite is the rare piece of C software that is actually bulletproof, so I don't think the pure-Go version can make the usual boasts about correctness and security in this particular case. Not needing extra external compilers is still a nice proposition, however.