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To update or switch versions, run webi tinygo@stable (or @v0.30, @beta, etc).

Cheat Sheet

TinyGo is an alternate, llvm-based compiler for Go with a much smaller and simpler runtime with a minimum size of kilobytes - suitable for micro-controllers, embedded devices, and good old fashioned CLI utilities that don't need a high-performance garbage collector.

GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 \
    tinygo build -short -no-debug \
    -o hello-v1.0.0-linux-arm64

You may also want to install the Go IDE tooling: go-essentials.

Table of Contents

• Files
• Effective TinyGo
• Compatibility
• Gotchas

Files

These are the files / directories that are created and/or modified with this install:

~/.config/envman/PATH.env
~/.local/opt/tinygo/
~/.local/opt/go/
~/go/

Effective TinyGo

Core differences from Go's self-hosted compiler:

• optimizes for stack usage over heap usage
• avoids reflection
• simpler (but slower) garbage collection
• reimplements some of Go's standard library for performance

By following certain patterns, you can avoid forcing heap allocation and get better memory usage and performance.

See:

• TinyGo: Heap Allocation: https://tinygo.org/docs/concepts/compiler-internals/heap-allocation/.
• TinyGo: A New Compiler: https://tinygo.org/docs/concepts/faq/why-a-new-compiler/

Go Compatibility

Your Go, TinyGo, and dependency versions (particularly golang.org/x) will need to be paired.

See the Go Compatibility Matrix

Gotchas

Standard Library

• avoid packages that rely heavily on reflection, like encoding/json

Windows:

• not all Windows syscalls are implemented

macOS:

• you may need to install a conflict-free version of llvm from conflict-free brew to get small sizes when cross-compiling

See also:

• TinyGo: Language Support: https://tinygo.org/docs/reference/lang-support/
• TinyGo: Gotchas: https://tinygo.org/docs/guides/tips-n-tricks/
• TinyGo: Differences from Go: https://tinygo.org/docs/concepts/compiler-internals/differences-from-go/