Understanding Go compiler tools (1)

Recently I read Go lang . I began to understand its structure.

How to build

You can build the go compiler and tools as documented in the official documentation .

It is quite easy. But it was confusing for me that I must run ./all.bash instead of usual make (1). I wonder why they don't simply use make . Anyway the bash script internally calls make as usual.

After building, I got the following executables in bin directory.

  • 6a: assembler
  • 6c: C compiler
  • 6g: Go compiler
  • 6l: linker
  • 6nm: same as nm(1)?
  • cgo
  • ebnflint
  • godefs
  • godoc
  • gofmt
  • goinstall
  • gomake
  • gopack
  • gopprof
  • gotest
  • gotry
  • govet
  • goyacc
  • hgpatch
  • quietgcc: gcc wrapper which is little slienter than native gcc

The oddish *1 prefix "6" is because I built the tools on amd64 architecture. The prefix varies according to architecture.

There are only three architectures which is implemented in the source:

This convention came from Plan 9 . I found the definitions for other architectures in include/mach.h :

2c(1) in Plan 9 describes one more architecture:

Directory structure

  • bin

    where executables will be generated into.

  • doc

    documentation

  • include

    C header files.

  • lib

    where some libraries will be generated into.

  • misc

    misc

  • pkg

    where Go standard packages (libraries) will be compiled into.

  • src

    source codes

  • test

    test cases

Let's dive into src :

  • cmd

    source codes for the Go tool chain

  • lib9

    Plan 9 C library?

  • libbio

    buffered IO library

  • libcgo

    ?

  • libmach

    library which contains architecture dependent codes

  • pkg

    source codes of Go standard packages

commands

Let's dive into cmd directory.

  • 5a/
  • 5c/
  • 5g/
  • 5l/
  • 6a/
  • 6c/
  • 6g/
  • 6l/
  • 8a/
  • 8c/
  • 8g/
  • 8l/
  • cc/
  • cgo/
  • cov/
  • ebnflint/
  • gc/
  • godefs/
  • godoc/
  • gofmt/
  • goinstall/
  • gomake/
  • gopack/
  • gotest/
  • govet/
  • goyacc/
  • hgpatch/
  • ld/
  • nm/
  • prof/

[568][acgl] directories contain architecture dependent part of the sources. Architecture independent parts of the Go compiler are in gc directory.

I will read the detail of gc in the next post.

*1:oddish, at least for me, who grew with GNU/Linux environment.