How to embed files into Golang binaries?

Question

I have some text file that I read from my Go program. I\'d like to ship a single executable, without supplying that text file additionally. How do I embed it into compilatio

Answer 1

Was looking for the same thing and came across esc: Embedding Static Assets in Go (by 19 Nov 2014) where author, Matt Jibson, is evaluating 3 other popular packages that claims to do file embedding:

1. rakyll/statik
2. jteeuwen/go-bindata (and the new official go-bindata/go-bindata and another improved one kevinburke/go-bindata)
3. GeertJohan/go.rice

and explain why he eventually come up with his own package:

4. mjibson/esc

So after briefly trying them all (in that order) I've naturally settled on Matt's esc as it was the only one that was working out of the box with necessary for me functionality, namely:

1. Can take some directories and recursively embed all files in them in a way that was compatible with http.FileSystem
2. Can optionally be disabled for use with the local file system for local development without changing the client's code
3. Will not change the output file on subsequent runs has reasonable-sized diffs when files changed
4. Capable of doing the work via //go:generate instead of forcing you to manually write additional Go code

The point #2 was important for me and the rest of the packages for one reason or another didn't work out that well.

From esc's README:

esc embeds files into go programs and provides http.FileSystem interfaces to them.

It adds all named files or files recursively under named directories at the path specified. The output file provides an http.FileSystem interface with zero dependencies on packages outside the standard library.