go-webview-hello

The smallest runnable version of the pattern described in "Ship a desktop Linux app as one Go binary": one binary, no Electron, no CGO.

Talk is cheap. This is the code:

• an embedded page (//go:embed of a single HTML file — no SPA toolchain),
• an http.Server on the loopback serving it plus one JSON endpoint,
• a GTK webview window (-tags desktop) through glaze / purego over the distro's WebKitGTK,
• a tray icon (fyne.io/systray, plain DBus, no GTK) in the buildr.fun favicon style (SVG source),
• the close-button veto: the window's delete-event fires before GTK decides to destroy, so "close" hides to tray instead of quitting,
• one shutdown funnel (sync.Once) for window-quit, tray-quit and signals,
• a PKGBUILD whose version is derived from the git checkout so every commit is a strictly newer package under vercmp.

Layout

main.go        shared: embedded page, loopback server, /api/hello JSON
tag_on.go      desktopTag = true   (only with -tags desktop)
tag_off.go     desktopTag = false  (plain go build)
runui_stub.go  headless stub so one tree compiles both faces
desktop.go     desktop face: window, tray, signals, shutdown funnel
gtk.go         close-button veto via purego dlopen("libgtk-3.so.0")
tray.go        tray menu; GTK effects go through w.Dispatch
index.html     the whole "SPA"
packaging/     PKGBUILD, desktop entry, icons (SVG source + rendered PNGs)

Run it

Headless face (server only):

go build -o hello .
./hello
# serving on http://127.0.0.1:NNNNN — Ctrl-C to stop

Desktop face (server + window + tray):

go build -tags desktop -o hello-desktop .
./hello-desktop

Close the window: it hides. Bring it back or quit from the tray icon.

Test it

go test -v .               # headless face
go test -v -tags desktop . # desktop face (same suite; the GTK loop itself
                           # cannot run under go test — that is what the
                           # packaged check() and a real run are for)

Package it (Arch)

cd packaging && makepkg -f
sudo pacman -U go-webview-hello-*.pkg.tar.zst

check() inside the PKGBUILD runs both vets and both test suites before anything is packaged. The app shows up in your launcher; pacman -R go-webview-hello removes every file it ever laid down.

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed and when.

Requirements

Linux, Go ≥ 1.27 to build. At runtime the desktop face needs the system web stack — webkit2gtk-4.1 gtk3 glib2 dbus — nothing else; the binary dlopens libgtk-3.so.0 at startup and refuses to run on a GTK4/webkitgtk-6.0 stack (one process, one GTK major version).

License

MIT