vessel/README.md

vessel

Implements a golang library and command line tool for embedding contents of a zip file into a golang binary for the purpose of packing the binary and content into a single file for distribution.

The zip file is appended to the back of the binary, and the provided API allows us to access the zipped files directly.

bundling

In the example below, vesselcmd will zip up the content of site/ and attach it to the golang binary server

./vesselcmd build --overwrite --bundle=./server.exe --src=site/

Accessing the bundled resources

Once bundled the golang program can acess the content via:

    b, err := vessel.Self()
    if err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
    fs := b.FileSystem() // this returns an http.FileSystem 

We can then directly use the returned filesystem to serve http pages/content

    http.Handle("/", http.FileServer(fs))

Or we can access the files ourselves by using the http.FileSystem interfaces

    f, err := fs.Open("/templates/list.html")
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer f.Close()
    data, err := ioutil.ReadAll(f)