This repository shows how, by combining cgo and Rust's FFI capabilities, we can call Rust code from Golang.

Run make build-all and then make run-all to see Rust + Golang in action, building and running two binaries, one where the Rust lib is compiled to a shared lib, and one to a static lib. You should see some log output printed to stderr and then Hello John Smith! printed to stdout. This results in the binaries main_shared and main_static which you can run. See Makefile in this repository for more useful make targets.

Begin by creating a lib directory, where you will keep your Rust libraries. Andrew Oppenlander's article on creating a Rust dynamic library is a great introduction.

Then, you need to create a C header file for your library. Just copy the libc types that you used.

All that is left to do is to add some cgo-specific comments to your Golang code. These comments tell cgo where to find the library and its headers.

For importing a shared lib into your go code, the following must go along with an additional option given to go build (see Makefile):

/*
#cgo LDFLAGS: -L./lib -lhello
#include "./lib/hello.h"
*/
import "C"

For a static lib, the additional -ldl is necessary compared to the shared lib, presumably because in the shared lib linking, dl is linked in some other way by the magic of shared libs. To import a static lib into your go code:

/*
#cgo LDFLAGS: ./lib/libhello.a -ldl
#include "./lib/hello.h"
*/
import "C"

There should not be a newline between */ and import "C".