This guide will walk you through the steps required to build and publish aarch64 Docker images for Go projects. This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of Go and Docker, and that you have Go and Docker installed.

Setup a Go Project

First we setup a go.mod file for our project. The module file defines the project namespace and dependencies:

module github.com/octocat/hello-world

Next we create a simple Go program. For the purpose of this guide we create a simple http server that responds to an http request with hello world.

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package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", handler)
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

func handler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    fmt.Fprintln(w, "hello world")
}

Use the go tool to compile our program to a standalone binary file, and then execute the binary to start the server on port 8080.

$ go build
$ ./hello-world

Use cURL to verify the server is running and responding to requests:

$ curl http://localhost:8080
hello world

Setup a Dockerfile

Next we are ready to build a Docker image using a Dockerfile. A Dockerfile is a text file that has a series of instuctions and commands for creating the image. We create the following Dockerfile:

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FROM arm64v8/alpine
EXPOSE 8080
ADD hello-world /bin
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]

FROM Instruction

The FROM instruction set the base image for subsequent instructions. This sets an aarch64 Alpine Linux image as the base.

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FROM arm64v8/alpine
EXPOSE 8080
ADD hello-world /bin
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]

EXPOSE Instruction

The EXPOSE instruction informs Docker that the container listens on the specific port at runtime. This exposes port 8080.

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FROM arm64v8/alpine
EXPOSE 8080
ADD hello-world /bin
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]

ADD Instruction

The ADD instruction copies the binary to the target directory in the image. This adds the hello-world binary to the image.

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FROM arm64v8/alpine
EXPOSE 8080
ADD hello-world /bin
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]

ENTRYPOINT Instruction

The ENTRYPOINT instruction configures the default command that is executed when the container starts. This is configured to execute the hello-world binary.

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FROM arm64v8/alpine
EXPOSE 8080
ADD hello-world /bin
ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]

Build and Publish the Image

The next step is to build our Docker image. But first we need to re-compile our binary file for the target operating system and architecture. If you are compiling the program on macOS or Windows, or any amd64 machine, it will not execute inside an aarch64 Linux container environment.

Build the executable for the target operating system:

$ CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 go build

Build the Docker image:

$ docker build -t hello-world .

Sending build context to Docker daemon  7.342MB
Step 1/4 : FROM arm64v8/alpine
latest: Pulling from library/alpine
9d48c3bd43c5: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:72c42ed48c3a
Status: Downloaded newer image for alpine:latest
 ---> 961769676411
Step 2/4 : EXPOSE 8080
 ---> Running in 2f236d12e89b
Removing intermediate container 2f236d12e89b
 ---> d090ee077728
Step 3/4 : ADD hello-world /bin
 ---> bc936808d504
Step 4/4 : ENTRYPOINT [ "/bin/hello-world" ]
 ---> Running in 3abd9fbc427e
Removing intermediate container 3abd9fbc427e
 ---> 37fb6bd7aafe
Successfully built 37fb6bd7aafe
Successfully tagged hello-world:latest

Create and run a Docker container using our image. Note that we expose port 8080 inside the container and map to port 8080 on the host.

$ docker run -p 8080:8080 hello-world

Continuous Integration

Once our project is ready and is pushed to GitHub we can automate the build and test process using continuous integration.

In this section we configure Drone, an Open Source continuous integration system, to automatically build and test our code every time we push to GitHub. You can install Drone on your own servers, or you can use the free Cloud offering.

Activation

Fist, login into Drone and activate your repository:

Configuration

Next, define a Continuous Integration Pipeline for your project. Drone looks for special .drone.yml file within repositories for the Pipeline definition:

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kind: pipeline
type: docker
name: build

platform:
  os: linux
  arch: arm64

steps:
- name: test
  image: golang:1.12
  environment:
    CGO_ENABLED: "0"
  commands:
  - go test ./...
  - go build

In the above example we define our Pipeline steps as a series of shell commands executed inside Docker containers.

The platform Section

Defines the target operating system and environment.

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kind: pipeline
type: docker
name: build

platform:
  os: linux
  arch: arm64

The name Attribute

Defines the name of the Pipeline step.

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steps:
- name: test
  image: golang:1.12
  environment:
    CGO_ENABLED: "0"
  commands:
  - go test -v ./...
  - go build

The image Attribute

Defines the Docker image in which Pipeline commands are executed.

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steps:
- name: test
  image: golang:1.12
  environment:
    CGO_ENABLED: "0"
  commands:
  - go test -v ./...
  - go build

The commands Attribute

Defines the Pipeline commands executed inside the Docker container.

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steps:
- name: test
  image: golang:1.12
  environment:
    CGO_ENABLED: "0"
  commands:
  - go test -v ./...
  - go build

Execution

The Pipeline will execute every time we push code to our repository. We can login to Drone and inspect the Pipeline results:

Continuous Delivery

The final step is to automatically build and publish a Docker image to DockerHub. In order to publish and image to DockerHub we need to provide our credentials.

Secrets

For security reasons we do not want to store our credentials in our yaml. Instead you can securely store your secrets in the Drone database, adding your docker username and password via the repository settings screen.

Settings

Drone has a robust plugin system, including a plugin to build and publish images. Add a new step to the Docker Pipeline and configure the Docker plugin.

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- name: publish
  image: plugins/docker
  settings:
    repo: hello-world
    tags: latest
    username:
      from_secret: username
    password:
      from_secret: password

The image Attribute

Defines the image used to build and publish the Docker image.

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- name: publish
  image: plugins/docker
  settings:
    repo: hello-world
    tags: latest
    username:
      from_secret: username
    password:
      from_secret: password

The username Attribute

Provides the username used to authenticate with the Docker registry, source from the named secret.

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- name: publish
  image: plugins/docker
  settings:
    repo: hello-world
    tags: latest
    username:
      from_secret: username
    password:
      from_secret: password

The password Attribute

Provides the password used to authenticate with the Docker registry, sourced from the named secret.

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- name: publish
  image: plugins/docker
  settings:
    repo: hello-world
    tags: latest
    username:
      from_secret: username
    password:
      from_secret: password

The repo Attribute

Provides the Docker repository name.

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- name: publish
  image: plugins/docker
  settings:
    repo: hello-world
    tags: latest
    username:
      from_secret: username
    password:
      from_secret: password

Next Steps

Now that you have Drone automatically building and publishing Docker images you can add more advanced Pipeline steps. For example, you can automatically update your Kubernetes pods to use your new images, or you can send Slack notifications to your team every time your Pipeline completes.