Exercise: Compiling software with Go

In this exercise, you will compile hey, a small command-line application written in Go, using the built-in go tool.

Load an available Go module:

module load Go/1.25.3

You need the source code, which in this case is available through GitHub. Clone the repository and enter the source directory:

git clone https://github.com/rakyll/hey.git
cd hey

Select a version, for example v0.1.5:

git switch --detach v0.1.5

Inspect the source directory:

ls

Which files indicate that this is a Go project?

If needed, you can update the module dependencies with:

go mod tidy

go mod tidy updates the module dependencies and may create or update the go.sum file, which records checksums for downloaded modules.

Build the software and place the executable in a bin directory:

mkdir -p bin
go build -o ./bin/hey ./

You can use go help build to inspect more build options.

Optionally, add this directory to your PATH:

export PATH=$PWD/bin:$PATH

Test the resulting executable:

hey -n 100 https://example.com

Note: Go builds for a baseline CPU architecture by default, providing good portability across CPUs. ISA-level optimization can be enabled, for example on x86-64 with:

GOAMD64=v3 go build -o ./bin/hey ./

This can improve performance, but the resulting executable may not run on CPUs that do not support the required instruction set.