DevOpsifying a Go Web App

DevOpsifying a Go Web App: From Code to Cloud ☁️🚀

Hey DevOps enthusiasts! 👋
In this post, we’ll take a simple Go web application and walk through how to wrap it in a modern DevOps workflow—from containerization to CI/CD and Kubernetes deployment. Whether you're a developer looking to level up your ops game or a DevOps engineer exploring Go-based projects, this guide is for you.

🔍 Project Overview

The go-web-app is a basic web application built using Go’s net/http package. It includes:

• Basic routing (login, dashboard, logout)

• MySQL database integration

• HTML templates and static assets

Let’s now shift gears and look at how to productionize this app using DevOps best practices.

🐳 Step 1: Containerize with Docker

Create a Dockerfile in the root directory:

FROM golang:1.22.5 as builder WORKDIR /app COPY . . RUN go mod download RUN go build -o main .

FROM gcr.io/distroless/base WORKDIR /app COPY --from=builder /app/main . COPY --from=builder /app/static ./static EXPOSE 8080 CMD ["./main"]

Then build and push the image:

docker build -t your-dockerhub-username/go-web-app . docker push your-dockerhub-username/go-web-app

⚙️ Step 2: Set Up CI/CD with GitHub Actions

Create a .github/workflows/deploy.yml file:

name: CI/CD Pipeline on: push: branches: [ main ] jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v3 - name: Set up Go uses: actions/setup-go@v4 with: go-version: 1.22 - name: Build run: go build -o main . - name: Docker Build & Push uses: docker/build-push-action@v5 with: context: . push: true tags: your-dockerhub-username/go-web-app:latest

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☸️ Step 3: Deploy to Kubernetes with Helm

Create a Helm chart (helm/go-web-app-chart) and define your values.yaml:

image: repository: your-dockerhub-username/go-web-app tag: latest service: type: LoadBalancer port: 80

Then deploy using:

helm install go-web-app ./helm/go-web-app-chart

🔁 Step 4: GitOps with ArgoCD

1. Install ArgoCD on your cluster.

2. Create an Application manifest pointing to your Helm chart repo.

3. ArgoCD will automatically sync changes from Git to your cluster.

🧠 Final Thoughts

This project is a great example of how to take a simple Go app and wrap it in a full DevOps pipeline. From Docker to GitHub Actions to Kubernetes and GitOps, you’ve got a solid foundation to build on.