Programmatic way to call go tools

Question

Is there a way to call the Go tools (like go build) programmatically from within another Go program with a library call and to get more structured output compared to the text output from the command line invocation?

I don't think you can get more then what the help shows you. You can call it using the `os/exec` package. — , Jun 05 '17 at 11:49

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 10 '19 at 15:44

If you're trying to run build programmatically you can also use the os/exec package.

func runBuild() {
    cmd := exec.Command("go", "build", "./main.go")
    err := cmd.Run()
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }

}

You can pass other flags too. E.g: the buildmode flag

cmd := exec.Command("go", "build", "-buildmode=plugin", "./main.go")

Reference: https://golang.org/pkg/os/exec/

score -2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 06 '17 at 20:46

-2

Within another go program it is possible to execute console commands using the os/exec package like so:

func main (){
   cmd := exec.Command("go run lib/main.go")
   if err := cmd.Run(); err != nil{
       log.Fatal(err)
   }
}

I don't see this being very useful though.

answered Jun 06 '17 at 20:46

The first argument to exec.Command is the name of the program. The name of the program is `go`, not `go run lib/main.go`. See the @Stephen's answer for correct way to run the go command. – Charlie Tumahai Aug 26 '20 at 23:51

Programmatic way to call go tools

2 Answers2