Go Without an OS? Meet GOOS=none

A wild new proposal could let you write low-level code—like boot managers or firmware—directly in Go. No OS needed. Seriously.

Author

Liam Manesh
May 13, 2025

Ian Taylor, a longtime contributor to Go, has left Google after 19 years. His exit has sparked discussion about Go’s relationship with Google and the language’s ongoing growth beyond its original core team [1][2][3].

❝

But Gooogle has changed, and Go has changed, and the overall computer programming environment has changed. It’s become clear over the last year or so that I am no longer a good fit for the Go project at Google. I have to move on.

Would you like to write your very own UEFI boot manager in Go?

A new Golang proposal that’s gaining a lot of attention aims to add bare-metal support to the Go compiler. By introducing a GOOS=none target, Go could soon allow us to build firmware, bootloaders, or even microVMs in pure Go.

The proposal builds on the proven Tamago project, which already allows Go programs to be compiled and executed directly on bare metal — including AMD64, ARM, and RISC-V processors.

Build your own ResponseWriter: safer HTTP in Go

Go's `http.ResponseWriter` writes directly to the socket, which can lead to subtle bugs like forgetting to set a status code or accidentally modifying headers too late. In this article I explain how to write your own defensive ResponseWriter.

anto.pt/articles/go-http-responsewriter

Graceful Shutdown in Go: Practical Patterns

Go applications can implement graceful shutdown by handling termination signals (SIGTERM, SIGINT) via os/signal or signal.NotifyContext. Shutdown must complete within a specified timeout (e.g., Kubernetes’ terminationGracePeriodSeconds)…

victoriametrics.com/blog/go-graceful-shutdown/index.html

Challenge: make this Go function inlinable and free of bounds checks

In this post, I challenge you to refactor a small Go function in such a way as to make it inlinable and free of bounds checks, for better performance.

jub0bs.com/posts/2025-04-30-inlinability-challenge

Organize your Go middleware without dependencies

How can you manage middlewares in Go web applications without relying on third-party packages? Using the standard library's new pattern matching features introduced in Go 1.22, you can organise middlewares more cleanly and efficiently.

www.alexedwards.net/blog/organize-your-go-middleware-without-dependencies

  1. 🚀 github.com/Oudwins/zog — Zog is a schema builder for runtime value parsing and validation. Define a schema, transform a value to match, assert the shape of an existing value, or both.

  2. 🌟 github.com/tienanr/docurift — DocuRift is a powerful tool that automatically generates and maintains REST API documentation by observing real API traffic. It acts as a proxy between your clients and API server, capturing and analysing requests and responses to create comprehensive documentation.

I've had a few folks email me asking if I can share open roles. I know the job market’s not great right now, and we could all use a hand. So if your company has any Go-related openings that would be a good fit for this newsletter, send them my way—I’m happy to include them. Just no recruiter posts, please—only direct applications.

To start, here’s a role my company is hiring for in Seattle or check this out for all open positions.
If it seems like a good fit, feel free to reach out and send over your CV—or you can apply directly if you prefer.

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