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A Big Problem in Go That No One Talks About
Compiling Go projects into a Windows executable is problematic, due to a lack of communication between Google and Microsoft
Cross-Compiling Go Projects
If you’re a Go developer, you’re probably aware that cross-compiling is one of the big features of the language. This allows you to compile your code on one platform for use on another. For example, you can compile your code on a Mac for use on a Windows machine. This is fantastic for developers who want to target multiple platforms with their code.
However, there is a big problem when compiling Go projects for use on Windows.
The Problem
When a Go project is compiled for Windows, a single binary is created (on Windows, these are .exe files). The process of how Go compiles this binary is relatively unique, and often confuses antivirus scanners, resulting in the binary being mistakenly detected as a virus.
This is of course quite problematic, as it can happen that the browser does not allow a download of the compiled file at all. That was the case in one of my open-source projects. Users were not able to download new releases. If they disabled the virus scanner in Chrome and downloaded the executable, the file was deleted by Windows Defender directly after the download. This made it impossible to install the program without turning off the virus protection of the entire computer.
Problem Analysis
I wrote a simple “Hello World” program in Go and compiled it for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Here are the results of different virus scanners:
I did not include the test results of macOS, as they were the same as the Linux test results.
All programs are compiled with the latest version at the moment (v1.19.2).
