Building a web service with go-tool-base, part 2: a gRPC service, with TLS
Define a protobuf contract, generate Go with buf, implement a gRPC server over a domain store, and turn on hardened TLS with mkcert and ALPN.
Categories
84 pages
go-tool-base
The underpinnings for any Go application that ships as a binary: command-line tools to start with, and (as more than half of what is built on it now proves) long-running services and local web UIs too. It standardises the boilerplate and wiring you end up writing in every Go project, and puts config, logging, self-update, a DI container and the rest straight at your fingertips. Highly opinionated, and it makes some calls people will disagree with, but it works, and it works really well. The CLI it ships with is a big part of that: keeping a Go app built, updated and maintained becomes almost trivial.
Building a web service with go-tool-base, part 1: lifecycle and graceful shutdown
Service lifecycle in Go: register services with start and stop verbs, handle SIGINT and SIGTERM, and shut down gracefully with liveness checks.
Building a CLI with go-tool-base, part 5: a CLI that updates itself
Add self-update to a Go CLI: resolve releases per platform, compare versions, verify checksums and migrate config on upgrade.
Building a CLI with go-tool-base, part 4: an AI dungeon master
Build an AI dungeon master in Go: keep the model to prose only by putting the rules in the system prompt and the mechanics in typed tool calls.
Building a CLI with go-tool-base, part 3: expose your CLI to AI agents
Expose an existing Go CLI to AI agents over MCP without writing any AI code, using built-in commands. The agent reach equals the CLI reach.
Building a CLI with go-tool-base, part 2: configuration your tool can trust
Configuration for a Go CLI: precedence of flags over env over files, per-command embedded defaults, layered config merging and a strict mode.
Building a CLI with go-tool-base, part 1: scaffold and your first command
Install gtb, scaffold a releasable Go project, understand the generated and owned file split, then add your first command and run it.
Pure-Rust Git, no git binary
Doing local Git from Rust with gix rather than shelling out to the git binary or linking libgit2, and why that avoids a lot of cross-compilation pain.
Why go-tool-base left GitHub for GitLab
An accidental major version bump was the last straw after months of unreliability. Why a Go framework moved off GitHub, and what moved with it.
Reloading config without a restart
Hot-reloading configuration: watch the file, re-read it, swap it in atomically and notify observers, without restarting a long-running service.
