Deploying Go Applications – Dockerize and Host on AWS/GCP

Building a Go Binary

go build -o myapp main.go
./myapp

Go compiles to a single, statically-linked binary with no external runtime dependencies, which makes deployment especially simple.

Dockerizing a Go Application

FROM golang:1.22 AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN go build -o myapp

FROM alpine:latest
COPY --from=builder /app/myapp /myapp
CMD ["/myapp"]

This multi-stage build keeps the final image small by discarding the Go toolchain after compilation.

Deploying to AWS

• Amazon ECS/EKS — run your Docker container in a managed container service.
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk — simplified deployment for Go web applications.
• AWS Lambda — run Go code as serverless functions using the AWS Lambda Go runtime.

Deploying to GCP

• Google Cloud Run — deploy containerized Go apps with automatic scaling.
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) — for more complex, orchestrated deployments.