silviahyde / go2wingcc

Demonstration on calling Go lib from C on Windows with gcc

Here we demonstrate how to compile a Go library under Linux, but to be used by C source with gcc on Windows.

Under Linux

Setup the build environment

Pull the official golang docker: (it's a Debian buster)

docker pull golang:1.14

In that container, install mingw w64 gcc:

apt install gcc-mingw-w64

Cross-compile with mingw

Archived version, for static link:

This will produce two files: libaw.a, libaw.h .

GOOS=windows CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc CGO_ENABLED=1 go build -v -o libaw.a -buildmode=c-archive aw.go

Shared version, for dynamic link:

This will produce two files: aw.dll, aw.h .

GOOS=windows CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc CGO_ENABLED=1 go build -v -o aw.dll -buildmode=c-shared aw.go

Under Windows

The compiler used is (from gcc --version)

gcc (x86_64-posix-seh-rev0, Built by MinGW-W64 project) 8.1.0

Archived version, for static link:

This will produce a standalone portable c.exe .

gcc -pthread -o c.exe client.c -L. -law

Shared version, for dynamic link:

This will produce a c.exe, which is portable along with aw.dll .

gcc -pthread -o c.exe client.c -L. -law

Or we can cross-compile it on Linux like:

x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -pthread -o bin/client.exe client.c -Ibin -Lbin -law