Go bindings for YARA, staying as close as sensible to the library's C-API while taking inspiration from the yara-python implementation.

On a Unix system with libyara, its header files, and pkg-config installed, the following should simply work, provided that GOPATH is set:

go get github.com/hillu/go-yara
go install github.com/hillu/go-yara

The pkg-config program should be able to output the correct compiler and linker flags from the yara.pc file that has been generated and installed by YARA's build system. If libyara has been installed to a custom location, the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable can be used to point pkg-config at the right yara.pc file. If pkg-config cannot be used at all, please refer to the "Build Tags" section.

Linker errors in the compiler output such as

undefined reference to `yr_compiler_add_file'

indicate that the linker is probably looking at an old version of libyara. Please refer to the "Build Tags" section below on how to work with old YARA versions.

go-yara can be cross-built for a different CPU architecture/operating system platform, provided a C cross-compiler for the target platform is available to be used by the cgo tool.

After the yara library has been built from its source tree using the proper C cross-compiler through the usual configure / make / make install steps, go-yara can be built and installed. Some environment variables need to be set when running go build or go install:

• GOOS, GOARCH indicate the cross compilation target.
• CGO_ENABLED has to be set to 1 beacuse it defaults to 0 when cross-compiling.
• CC has to specified because cgo has no prior knowledge about what C compiler to chose for cross-compiling. (it defaults to the system C compiler, usually gcc).
• PKG_CONFIG_PATH has to be set in so that pkg-config which is run by cgo for determining compiler and linker flags can find the yara.pc file generated while cross-building yara.

Install the MinGW C compiler gcc-mingw-w64-i686, gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 for Win32, Win64, respectively.

Build libyara and go-yara for Win32:

$ cd ${YARA_SRC} \
  && ./bootstrap.sh \
  && ./configure --host=i686-w64-mingw32 --disable-magic --disable-cuckoo --without-crypto --prefix=${YARA_SRC}/i686-w64-mingw32 \
  && make -C ${YARA_SRC} \
  && make -C ${YARA_SRC} install 
$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=1 \
  CC=i686-w64-mingw32-gcc \
  PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${YARA_SRC}/i686-w64-mingw32/lib/pkgconfig \
  go inxstall -ldflags '-extldflags "-static"' github.com/hillu/go-yara

Build libyara and go-yara for Win64:

$ cd ${YARA_SRC} \
  && ./bootstrap.sh \
  && ./configure --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --disable-magic --disable-cuckoo --without-crypto --prefix=${YARA_SRC}/x86_64-w64-mingw32 \
  && make -C ${YARA_SRC} \
  && make -C ${YARA_SRC} install 
$ GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 CGO_ENABLED=1 \
  CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc \
  PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${YARA_SRC}/x86_64-w64-mingw32/lib/pkgconfig \
  go install -ldflags '-extldflags "-static"' github.com/hillu/go-yara

go-yara is tested with the latest stable version of YARA, currently 3.11. If you need to to build with an older version of YARA, certain features that are not present in older versions can be excluded by passing a build tag such as yara3.7, yara3.6, yara3.5, etc.. If you want to build with a git snapshot of YARA, you may use a build tag corresponding to the upcoming stable YARA version, currently yara3.9. You also need to pass the tag when you build your own project.

The build tag yara_static can be used to tell the Go toolchain to run pkg-config with the --static switch. This is not enough for a static build; the appropriate linker flags (e.g. -extldflags "-static") still need to be passed to the go tool.

The build tag no_pkg_config can be used to tell the Go toolchain not to use pkg-config's output. In this case, any compiler or linker flags have to be set via the CGO_CFLAGS and CGO_LDFLAGS environment variables, e.g.:

export CGO_CFLAGS="-I${YARA_SRC}/libyara/include"
export CGO_LDFLAGS="-L${YARA_SRC}/libyara/.libs -lyara"
go install -tags no_pkg_config github.com/hillu/go-yara

BSD 2-clause, see LICENSE file in the source distribution.

Hilko Bengen [email protected]