README.md

IC Canister in Go

Warning

This is an experimental POC for deploying a canister written in Go on the IC. It contains an hello world example that works, but there are likely to be problems using any libraries.

Prerequisites

1. Install Tinygo from source(https://tinygo.org/docs/guides/build/) with the following patch:

   diff --git a/targets/wasm-unknown.json b/targets/wasm-unknown.json
   index 903afa49..55ca4c70 100644
   --- a/targets/wasm-unknown.json
   +++ b/targets/wasm-unknown.json
   @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
    {
           "llvm-target":   "wasm32-unknown-unknown",
           "cpu":           "generic",
   -       "features":      "+mutable-globals,+nontrapping-fptoint,+sign-ext,-bulk-memory",
   +       "features":      "+mutable-globals,+nontrapping-fptoint,+sign-ext,+bulk-memory",
           "build-tags":    ["tinygo.wasm", "wasm_unknown"],
           "goos":          "linux",
           "goarch":        "arm",
   @@ -11,18 +11,17 @@
           "gc":            "leaking",
           "default-stack-size": 4096,
           "cflags": [
   -               "-mno-bulk-memory",
                   "-mnontrapping-fptoint",
                   "-msign-ext"
           ],
           "ldflags": [
                   "--stack-first",
                   "--no-demangle",
   -               "--no-entry",
   -               "--import-memory"
   +               "--no-entry"
           ],
           "extra-files": [
                   "src/runtime/asm_tinygowasm.S"
           ],
           "emulator":      "wasmtime --dir={tmpDir}::/tmp {}"
    }
   
   

   (I used commit https://github.com/tinygo-org/tinygo/commit/377415a6c3158d5cefe8cd46c592b144053593aa)

   This patch will enable the bulk memory operations Wasm feature and define a memory instead of importing one.

2. Install dfx (recommended using dfxvm).

Steps to build and deploy

1. Start a local dfx subnet.

   dfx start --clean --background
   

2. Build, deploy and send a message to the canister by executing run.sh. This assumes tinygo was installed to ~/go/bin/tinygo.