6 ms·

A native Go userland for your Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 appliances

147 points by RcrdBrt 5y ago

zokier 5y ago
If you want to go deeper, there is also bare-metal Go runtime for rpi (among others): https://github.com/f-secure-foundry/tamago https://github.com/f-secure-foundry/tamago
- allanrbo 5y ago
  Interesting! How does it differ from Gocrazy?
  - yencabulator 5y ago
    gokrazy is Linux, tamago is not.
znpy 5y ago
Is it just me or this feels like, effectively, a whole gnu/linux distribution?
- denysvitali 5y ago
  More like Go/Linux
- daenney 5y ago
  > aside from the Linux kernel and proprietary Raspberry Pi bootloader — only contains Go software. Given this is what the README states, how can it be a GNU/Linux distribution? It doesn’t include a shell or anything like coreutils either (GNU or otherwise).
  - znpy 5y ago
    > how can it be a GNU/Linux distribution? You're taking a few F/OSS components (in this case the Linux kernel, the golang toolchain and some custom software) and you're assemblying them into a bootable system. That's almost quite literally the definition of "gnu/linux distribution".
    - wyufro 5y ago
      What, no. It's not GNU/Linux if there's no GNU software present.
    - daenney 5y ago
      I think you might be misunderstanding what GNU/Linux means. GNU/Linux, or GNU plus Linux as I’ve recently taken to calling it, means combining a GNU userland (GNU libc, GNU coreutils, GNU compiler collection) and the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel itself is not a GNU project. If you want to use a GNU kernel then you need Hurd, hence GNU/Hurd. When you replace the whole userland with components that are not written by the GNU project, then it no longer is GNU/Linux. As such this is not a GNU/Linux distribution, and neither is Alpine for example since by default it doesn’t use a GNU userland.
lovebes 5y ago
Is this kinda like the Nerves approach but for Golang? (https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves)
- jcpst 5y ago
  This space is really interesting to me- developing for pi by bundling up a whole image, for weird little software/hardware experiments. Anyone know if there a list of these types of frameworks anywhere?
  - convolvatron 5y ago
    there should be - here's one: https://nanovms.com/dev/tutorials/nanos-on-64-bit-arm https://nanovms.com/dev/tutorials/nanos-on-64-bit-arm
synergy20 5y ago
an interesting project. the size of the image concerns me: kernel+boot 100MB, with C it could be 4MB. kernel+boot+basicpackages 500MB, with C it could be 16MB. Golang is designed to be static all-in-one packages for each application(e.g. microservices), when you run a lot of them in any given system, it becomes really large together. I don't mind to use one or two go binaries in my embedded board, when I need a few of them, I am concerned about the storage size(possibly memory size as well).
- laumars 5y ago
  The only place on the readme where I could find those figures you came up with was the partition table and obviously a partition of 500MB doesn’t mean the applications are going to be 500MB in size. In fact it’s quite the opposite; it pretty much guarantees the applications are going to be less than 500MB given you are going to want some headroom to work with.
- Kipters 5y ago
  To be fair, this is designed for Raspberry Pi, and nowadays it's almost impossible to find a micro SD that's less than 16 GB and costs significantly less than a 16 GB one, I don't think a couple hundred MBs are a concern (even if it hurts my soul too)
  - Karellen 5y ago
    What's the max/typical read bandwidth from an SD card on a Pi? Even if the storage space is there, you might still get perceptible latency improvements with order-of-magnitude smaller binaries.
    - laumars 5y ago
      If that’s an issue just cache the file in RAM. 500MB is still less than the system memory on a Pi (and as I’ve pointed elsewhere, the OP was reading the partition table not the application file sizes).
      - 5y ago
kelvie 5y ago
It took a bit of digging, but it seems that encrypted wifi is not supported: https://github.com/gokrazy/gokrazy/issues/13 https://github.com/gokrazy/gokrazy/issues/13 And if you read the issue, it's a bit understandable to not want to reimplement wpa_supplicant.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  Yep, but that makes it a non-starter for most Pi deployments, I think -- especially on Zero Ws, which is where this would be most interesting.
waymon 5y ago
now only to somehow buy a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4

147 points by RcrdBrt 5y ago

If you want to go deeper, there is also bare-metal Go runtime for rpi (among others): https://github.com/f-secure-foundry/tamago https://github.com/f-secure-foundry/tamago

allanrbo 5y ago
Interesting! How does it differ from Gocrazy?
- yencabulator 5y ago
  gokrazy is Linux, tamago is not.

znpy 5y ago

Is it just me or this feels like, effectively, a whole gnu/linux distribution?

denysvitali 5y ago
More like Go/Linux
daenney 5y ago
> aside from the Linux kernel and proprietary Raspberry Pi bootloader — only contains Go software. Given this is what the README states, how can it be a GNU/Linux distribution? It doesn’t include a shell or anything like coreutils either (GNU or otherwise).
- znpy 5y ago
  > how can it be a GNU/Linux distribution? You're taking a few F/OSS components (in this case the Linux kernel, the golang toolchain and some custom software) and you're assemblying them into a bootable system. That's almost quite literally the definition of "gnu/linux distribution".
  - wyufro 5y ago
    What, no. It's not GNU/Linux if there's no GNU software present.
  - daenney 5y ago
    I think you might be misunderstanding what GNU/Linux means. GNU/Linux, or GNU plus Linux as I’ve recently taken to calling it, means combining a GNU userland (GNU libc, GNU coreutils, GNU compiler collection) and the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel itself is not a GNU project. If you want to use a GNU kernel then you need Hurd, hence GNU/Hurd. When you replace the whole userland with components that are not written by the GNU project, then it no longer is GNU/Linux. As such this is not a GNU/Linux distribution, and neither is Alpine for example since by default it doesn’t use a GNU userland.

lovebes 5y ago

Is this kinda like the Nerves approach but for Golang? (https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves https://github.com/nerves-project/nerves)

jcpst 5y ago
This space is really interesting to me- developing for pi by bundling up a whole image, for weird little software/hardware experiments. Anyone know if there a list of these types of frameworks anywhere?
- convolvatron 5y ago
  there should be - here's one: https://nanovms.com/dev/tutorials/nanos-on-64-bit-arm https://nanovms.com/dev/tutorials/nanos-on-64-bit-arm

synergy20 5y ago

an interesting project. the size of the image concerns me: kernel+boot 100MB, with C it could be 4MB. kernel+boot+basicpackages 500MB, with C it could be 16MB. Golang is designed to be static all-in-one packages for each application(e.g. microservices), when you run a lot of them in any given system, it becomes really large together. I don't mind to use one or two go binaries in my embedded board, when I need a few of them, I am concerned about the storage size(possibly memory size as well).

laumars 5y ago
The only place on the readme where I could find those figures you came up with was the partition table and obviously a partition of 500MB doesn’t mean the applications are going to be 500MB in size. In fact it’s quite the opposite; it pretty much guarantees the applications are going to be less than 500MB given you are going to want some headroom to work with.
Kipters 5y ago
To be fair, this is designed for Raspberry Pi, and nowadays it's almost impossible to find a micro SD that's less than 16 GB and costs significantly less than a 16 GB one, I don't think a couple hundred MBs are a concern (even if it hurts my soul too)
- Karellen 5y ago
  What's the max/typical read bandwidth from an SD card on a Pi? Even if the storage space is there, you might still get perceptible latency improvements with order-of-magnitude smaller binaries.
  - laumars 5y ago
    If that’s an issue just cache the file in RAM. 500MB is still less than the system memory on a Pi (and as I’ve pointed elsewhere, the OP was reading the partition table not the application file sizes).
    - 5y ago

kelvie 5y ago

It took a bit of digging, but it seems that encrypted wifi is not supported: https://github.com/gokrazy/gokrazy/issues/13 https://github.com/gokrazy/gokrazy/issues/13 And if you read the issue, it's a bit understandable to not want to reimplement wpa_supplicant.

rcarmo 5y ago
Yep, but that makes it a non-starter for most Pi deployments, I think -- especially on Zero Ws, which is where this would be most interesting.

waymon 5y ago

now only to somehow buy a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4