Golang is the most used programming language for developing cloud technologies. Tools such as Kubernetes, Docker, Containerd and gVisor are all written in Go. Despite the fact that the code of these programs is open source, there is not an obvious way to analyze and extend their behaviour dynamically (for example through binary instrumentation) without recompiling their code. Is this due to the complex internals of the language or is there something else? In this third blog post, we will demonstrate how to dynamically instrument Golang code by implementing the function hooks described in the first blog post. Furthermore, we will tackle the limitations of this approach using FFI (Foreign function interfaces) in Golang which we saw in the second blog post of this series.

Golang is the most used programming language for developing cloud technologies. Tools such as Kubernetes, Docker, Containerd and gVisor are written in Go. Despite the fact that the code of these programs is open source, there is no way to analyze and extend their behaviour dynamically (for example through binary instrumentation) without recompiling their code. Is this due to the complex internals of the language? In this second blog post, we’ll showcase how to create runtime hooks for Golang programs using FFI (foreign function interfaces).

Golang is the most used programming language for developing cloud technologies. Tools such as Kubernetes, Docker, Containerd and gVisor are written in Go. Despite the fact that the code of these programs is open source, there is no way to analyze and extend their behavior dynamically without recompiling their code. Is this due to the complex internals of the language? In this blog post, we’ll look into the challenges of developing and inserting runtime hooks in Golang programs.