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Right now there's Go compilers for Windows, Mac and Linux. I'm sure others will follow soon.


There is more to platforms than operating systems. I worked on an application that had to function on 8 different hardware architectures[0], though on all but one we ran Linux. We also had code that was bare metal (no OS) running on FPGAs and DSPs. Go is a long way from supporting that.

This is not to say Go will not get there eventually, if the language gains popularity. Someone had to write or modify a compiler to target all those architectures for C, after all. This is just a reaction to what I see as assumptions tying operating systems to certain hardware architectures (in this and other discussions). Go can be used on a range of operating systems on two hardware architectures. Very good progress, but the language needs to get that second number up before we can seriously talk about it replacing C.

[0] Only had to perform well on two, fortunately.


+ FreeBSD.

Also, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Plan 9 in the works.


OpenBSD and Plan 9 pretty much work already, even if the ports might not be as polished as FreeBSD.

Also there is gccgo, which AFAIK also works on Solaris and probably elsewhere.


Yes, it works on IRIX and RTEMS (an embedded OS), and the gc suite was also ported on Ethos.

I'd also like to add that the gc compilers support ARM as well as x86 and amd64 and are very, very easy to port to new platforms.




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