Is it possible to include inline assembly in Go code?

Question

Is it possible to include inline assembly in Go code?

Answer 1

The optimization pass in the standard Go compiler (that is: 8g+8l, not gccgo) is basically working with raw instructions in binary form. There is currently no way (it isn't implemented) for the compiler to distinguish compiler-generated assembly from user-supplied inline assembly code - this is the primary reason why the Go compiler doesn't allow inline assembly. In other words, the compiler has no support for inline assembly because of compiler architecture.

There is of course nothing in the Go language itself which would be preventing other Go language implementations (that is: other Go compilers) to have support for inline assembly. Inline assembly is a compiler-specific decision - it has little to do with the Go language itself.

In either case, inline assembly is unsafe because it cannot be checked for correctness by Go's type system. It seems it is better to implement any function which requires usage of inline assembly in a language like C, and call the C function from Go.