gogopython

Python, but in Go.

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build

Heads up: this currently requires Python 3.12. No if's, and's or but's.

Using

gogopython merely exposes the Python C-Api, so you'll need to use it just like you would without Go. For an example of spinning up a sub-interpreter, see the example program in cmd/main.go.

Library Detection

The biggest pain is finding the Python dynamic library. On some Linux systems, it must be installed separately (Debian-based distros for sure).

sudo apt install libpython3.12

gogopython will try to find the library using distutils via the given Python binary. This may require installing setuptools via pip.

Quick command line test

Simply run the example program via go run example/example.go or, if python3 is not in your path, provide it as a command line argument. For example, using a virtual environment might look like:

# Create and activate virtual environment.
python3 -m venv venv
. venv/bin/activate

# Install setuptools. This is used for library discovery.
pip install setuptools

# We no longer need the virtual environment enabled.
deactivate

# Run the test app.
go run example/example.go ./venv/bin/python3

Note: if on Linux, make sure you have setuptools installed.

Known Issues

• Requires Python 3.12 as it uses sub-interpreters. Sorry, not sorry.

• Linux requires a shim using the ffi Go module that uses purego to leverage libffi, so on Linux libffi must be available. This is all because some super old Python C API functions decide to return a struct on the stack and purego only supports that on macOS currently.

• The Python API is super thread local storage oriented. Using it with Go is a small nightmare. Gratuitous use of runtime.LockOSThread() is required. gogopython does not enforce this behavior.

• Not all of the C API is wrapped and is being wrapped incrementally as needed.