Will TinyGo ever get the "net" package (net, net/http) implemented?

Abram · February 10, 2025, 1:27pm

On TinyGo official page there is info, that net(/…) can not be compiled.
Well, all that official page looks like TinyGo is much not up to date (for example their Video tab has posts from 2003, Articles tab… from 2022).
It looks like TinyGo was very neglected by the creator, even releases info adds very little progress.
Is it worth learning? Or maybe only “blinking LED projects”, no more?
Thanks in advance!

Dean_Davidson · February 10, 2025, 8:33pm

How so? It looks like it’s being actively developed to me. Last release was December 2024 and brought quite a few bug fixes and improvements:

Have you tried their port of net?

Only you can answer that for yourself based on your use case.

Abram · February 10, 2025, 9:04pm

As I said, new relases adds very very little progress. It is enought to see the version, ZERO.35. Just bugs repairing and adding smal news, in rare areas. Developed for years I must say…
I think, they lost the microcontrollers market, C++ and MicroPython are far away.
I like Go and wanted to use it with Raspberry Pi Pico but - as you ask - no I did not test, because there is nothing (net/…) to test, as you can see on this screen (from official TinyGo site):

Dean_Davidson · February 10, 2025, 11:46pm

Yeah - it’s not to version 1 yet. So it’s totally understandable that things like the documentation website might be different from the latest releases. It looks like that net package was added about a year ago:

If you looked at the net package I linked to previously the README says:

See README-net.md in drivers repo to more details on using “net” and “net/http” packages in a TinyGo application.

If you follow those instructions you get to this:

github.com

tinygo-org/drivers/blob/release/README-net.md

### Table of Contents

- ["net" Package](#net-package)
- [Using "net" Package](#using-net-package)
- [Using "net/http" Package](#using-nethttp-package)
- [Using "crypto/tls" Package](#using-cryptotls-package)
- [Using Sockets](#using-sockets)

## "net" Package

TinyGo's "net" package is ported from Go.  The port offers a subset of Go's
"net" package.  The subset maintains Go 1 compatiblity guarantee.  A Go
application that uses "net" will most-likey just work on TinyGo if the usage is
within the subset offered.  (There may be external constraints such as limited
SRAM on some targets that may limit full "net" functionality).

Continue below for details on using "net" and "net/http" packages.

See src/net/READMD.md in the TinyGo repo for more details on maintaining
TinyGo's "net" package.

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… which should tell you what you need to know.

Fixing bugs? Yeah - that’s a pretty important part of writing software. Good for them!

I mean - this is a space that Go was never trying to enter. In fact, on TinyGo’s README they have this somewhat tongue-in-cheek quote:

We never expected Go to be an embedded language and so its got serious problems…

– Rob Pike, GopherCon 2014 Opening Keynote

Give the steps in that README a try if you want. Or just use MicroPython if you’re more comfortable with that.