---

title: Building Windows Go programs on Linux

See here for available GOOS and GOARCH values.

Go version >= 1.5

Since Go version 1.5 cross-compiling of pure Go executables has become very easy. Try it out with the code below. More can be found at this blog post by Dave Cheney.

$ cat hello.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        fmt.Printf("Hello\n")
}
$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build -o hello.exe hello.go

In cmd.exe instead of PowerShell:

$ set GOOS=windows
$ set GOARCH=386
$ go build -o hello.exe hello.go

You can now run hello.exe on a Windows machine near you.

Note that the first time you run the command above it will silently rebuild most of standard library, and for this reason will be quite slow. Subsequent builds will be faster due to Go command build caching.

Note also that cgo is disabled when cross-compiling, so any file that mentions import "C" will be silently ignored (See https://github.com/golang/go/issues/24068). In order to use cgo, or any of the build modes c-archive, c-shared, shared, plugin, you need to have a C cross-compiler.

Older Go version (<1.5)

I use linux/386, but, I suspect, this procedure will apply to other host platforms as well.

Preparation (if needed):

sudo apt-get install gcc
export go env GOROOT

First step is to build host version of go:

cd $GOROOT/src
sudo -E GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 PATH=$PATH ./make.bash

Next you need to build the rest of go compilers and linkers. I have small program to do that:

$ cat ~/bin/buildcmd
#!/bin/sh
set -e
for arch in 8 6; do
	for cmd in a c g l; do
		go tool dist install -v cmd/$arch$cmd
	done
done
exit 0

Last step is to build Windows versions of standard commands and libraries. I have a small script for that too:

$ cat ~/bin/buildpkg
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
	echo 'GOOS is not specified' 1>&2
	exit 2
else
	export GOOS=$1
	if [ "$GOOS" = "windows" ]; then
		export CGO_ENABLED=0
	fi
fi
shift
if [ -n "$1" ]; then
	export GOARCH=$1
fi
cd $GOROOT/src
go tool dist install -v pkg/runtime
go install -v -a std

I run it like that:

$ ~/bin/buildpkg windows 386

to build Windows/386 version of Go commands and packages. You can probably see from my script that I exclude building of any cgo related parts — these will not work for me, since I do not have correspondent gcc cross-compiling tools installed. So I just skip those.

Now we're ready to build our Windows executable:

$ cat hello.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
        fmt.Printf("Hello\n")
}
$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=386 go build -o hello.exe hello.go

We just need to find a Windows computer to run our hello.exe.