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Comment by tkfu | Hacker News Reader

How did you manage to get something written in Go into the iOS app store? I was under the impression that foreign binaries weren't allowed.

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There was a brief period where they seemed to be insisting on Objective-C, but it didn't last long. Now they don't care what language you use as long as your functionality follows their guidelines.

This was brought up a couple days ago during discussion of a game built in Rust on the app store. A comment there[0] claims that the restriction on languages is no longer in the guidelines.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14302931

In fact, it was only in the guidelines for a few months back in 2010. I can only quote the response to the comment you linked:

> This rule got so much press 7 years ago that it will be one of those "truths" about a platform that never dies on internet forums, that and the Playstation platforms using OpenGL as their primary API...

Google has had a Go app, "Ivy," on the app store since 2015. I think it was just an experiment at getting Go to build for the App Store and getting it approved, but it was in fact approved.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ivy-big-number-calculator/id...

It's true that fork() isn't allowed on non-jailbroken phones, so you can't shell out to a Go binary (you can on Android if you want). But you can build a static library in Go and link it and call into it with cgo from Objective-C or something.

The bigger problem with go is if/when Apple requires bitcode on iOS.

For those who don't know what "bitcode" refers to and why the "if/when":

https://medium.com/@FredericJacobs/why-i-m-not-enabling-bitc...

I hope never ...

Unless devs are given the option to test the final binary, it's delivering untested binaries to users, and as such should be a no go.

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