Goblinpack is retired since go 1.16 was released

see https://harsimranmaan.medium.com/embedding-static-files-in-a-go-binary-using-go-embed-bac505f3cb9a

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Goblinpack allows packing of binary assets inside Go executables. Unlike other packers, it:

• Has no binary overhead (some packers use base64 or even ascii-hex gzip data. Goblinpack uses byte slices. There is a 6x overhead for source, but (practically) no overhead for the compiled executable.
• Does not have any clever code to work in dev mode without creating bundles (which makes it simpler)
• Does not compress the files. I suggest using UPX to compress the entire binary, with -s -w LDFLAGS to strip debugging symbols.
• Produces self-contained data files with no dependencies

Usage

goblinpack <module path> <files...>

Goblinpack will then generate a golang module, creating directories as necessary:

<module path>/data.go
<module path>/decoders.go

Let's say you have a directory called sounds containing .wav files.

GO111MODULE=off go get -u github.com/naggie/goblinpack/goblinpack
goblinpack _data/sounds sounds/*

You can then use the data:

import github.com/username/repository/_data/sounds

r, err := _data.GetReader("test.wav")

Produces a module, _data/sounds which contains the following methods:

• GetReader(filepath string) (io.Reader, err)
• GetByteSlice(filepath string) *bytes[]

Tips

• Add _data to your .gitignore file. Generated data file should not be checked in
• Make sure you don't accidentally import data files that aren't needed
• Use UPX to compress the entire binary
• Use -s -w LDFLAGS to strip debugging symbols to make your exe even smaller
• Use go generate to activate goblinpack as part of your build pipeline

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If there's demand I might implement http.FileSystem (like packr for easy use with http.Server.)

Packr's implementation: https://github.com/gobuffalo/packd/blob/master/file.go

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Tests to do:

• go fmt on data files should do nothing
• roundtrip test

Large files

See https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GcToolchainTricks . Note appending a zip archive is more suitable for larger (>10MB) files as the go compiler struggles with large source files.