Question

I am trying to create a static object written in Go to interface with a C program (say, a kernel module or something).

I have found documentation on calling C functions from Go, but I haven’t found much on how to go the other way. What I’ve found is that it’s possible, but complicated.

Here is what I found:

Blog post about callbacks between C and Go

Cgo documentation

Golang mailing list post

Does anyone have experience with this? In short, I’m trying to create a PAM module written entirely in Go.

Answer 1

You can call the Go code from C. It is a confusing proposition, though.

The process is outlined in the blog post you linked to. But I can see how that isn’t very helpful. Here is a short snippet without any unnecessary bits. It should make things a little clearer.

package foo

// extern int goCallbackHandler(int, int);
//
// static int doAdd(int a, int b) {
//     return goCallbackHandler(a, b);
// }
import "C"

//export goCallbackHandler
func goCallbackHandler(a, b C.int) C.int {
    return a + b
}

// This is the public function, callable from outside this package.
// It forwards the parameters to C.doAdd(), which in turn forwards
// them back to goCallbackHandler(). This one performs the addition
// and yields the result.
func MyAdd(a, b int) int {
   return int( C.doAdd( C.int(a), C.int(b)) )
}

The order in which everything is called is as follows:

foo.MyAdd(a, b) ->
  C.doAdd(a, b) ->
    C.goCallbackHandler(a, b) ->
      foo.goCallbackHandler(a, b)

The key to remember here is that a callback function must be marked with the //export comment on the Go side and as extern on the C side. This means that any callback you wish to use, must be defined inside your package.

In order to allow a user of your package to supply a custom callback function, we use the exact same approach as above, but we supply the user’s custom handler (which is just a regular Go function) as a parameter that is passed onto the C side as void*. It is then received by the callbackhandler in our package and called.

Let’s use a more advanced example I am currently working with. In this case, we have a C function that performs a pretty heavy task: It reads a list of files from a USB device. This can take a while, so we want our app to be notified of its progress. We can do this by passing in a function pointer that we defined in our program. It simply displays some progress info to the user whenever it gets called. Since it has a well known signature, we can assign it its own type:

type ProgressHandler func(current, total uint64, userdata interface{}) int

This handler takes some progress info (current number of files received and total number of files) along with an interface{} value which can hold anything the user needs it to hold.

Now we need to write the C and Go plumbing to allow us to use this handler. Luckily the C function I wish to call from the library allows us to pass in a userdata struct of type void*. This means it can hold whatever we want it to hold, no questions asked and we will get it back into the Go world as-is. To make all this work, we do not call the library function from Go directly, but we create a C wrapper for it which we will name goGetFiles(). It is this wrapper that actually supplies our Go callback to the C library, along with a userdata object.

package foo

// #include <somelib.h>
// extern int goProgressCB(uint64_t current, uint64_t total, void* userdata);
// 
// static int goGetFiles(some_t* handle, void* userdata) {
//    return somelib_get_files(handle, goProgressCB, userdata);
// }
import "C"
import "unsafe"

Note that the goGetFiles() function does not take any function pointers for callbacks as parameters. Instead, the callback that our user has supplied is packed in a custom struct that holds both that handler and the user’s own userdata value. We pass this into goGetFiles() as the userdata parameter.

// This defines the signature of our user's progress handler,
type ProgressHandler func(current, total uint64, userdata interface{}) int 

// This is an internal type which will pack the users callback function and userdata.
// It is an instance of this type that we will actually be sending to the C code.
type progressRequest struct {
   f ProgressHandler  // The user's function pointer
   d interface{}      // The user's userdata.
}

//export goProgressCB
func goProgressCB(current, total C.uint64_t, userdata unsafe.Pointer) C.int {
    // This is the function called from the C world by our expensive 
    // C.somelib_get_files() function. The userdata value contains an instance
    // of *progressRequest, We unpack it and use it's values to call the
    // actual function that our user supplied.
    req := (*progressRequest)(userdata)
    
    // Call req.f with our parameters and the user's own userdata value.
    return C.int( req.f( uint64(current), uint64(total), req.d ) )
}

// This is our public function, which is called by the user and
// takes a handle to something our C lib needs, a function pointer
// and optionally some user defined data structure. Whatever it may be.
func GetFiles(h *Handle, pf ProgressFunc, userdata interface{}) int {
   // Instead of calling the external C library directly, we call our C wrapper.
   // We pass it the handle and an instance of progressRequest.

   req := unsafe.Pointer(&progressequest{ pf, userdata })
   return int(C.goGetFiles( (*C.some_t)(h), req ))
}

That’s it for our C bindings. The user’s code is now very straight forward:

package main

import (
    "foo"
    "fmt"
)

func main() {
    handle := SomeInitStuff()
    
    // We call GetFiles. Pass it our progress handler and some
    // arbitrary userdata (could just as well be nil).
    ret := foo.GetFiles( handle, myProgress, "Callbacks rock!" )

    ....
}

// This is our progress handler. Do something useful like display.
// progress percentage.
func myProgress(current, total uint64, userdata interface{}) int {
    fc := float64(current)
    ft := float64(total) * 0.01

    // print how far along we are.
    // eg: 500 / 1000 (50.00%)
    // For good measure, prefix it with our userdata value, which
    // we supplied as "Callbacks rock!".
    fmt.Printf("%s: %d / %d (%3.2f%%)\n", userdata.(string), current, total, fc / ft)
    return 0
}

This all looks a lot more complicated than it is. The call order has not changed as opposed to our previous example, but we get two extra calls at the end of the chain:

The order is as follows:

foo.GetFiles(....) ->
  C.goGetFiles(...) ->
    C.somelib_get_files(..) ->
      C.goProgressCB(...) ->
        foo.goProgressCB(...) ->
           main.myProgress(...)