What causes 'go build' to fail with 'unexpected NUL in input'?

Question

I have a Linux VM where I am trying to compile a simple Go package. The package was retrieved into my user directory with git:

$ git clone [...]/test.go
Cloning into 'test.go'...
done.
$ cd test.go/
$ ls
main.go

I set up the GOPATH and build:

$ export GOPATH=$PWD; echo $GOPATH
/home/vagrant/test.go
$ go build
$ ls
main.go test.go*

So far so good. But now when I try to build again, it fails:

$ go build
can't load package: package .: read /home/vagrant/test.go/test.go: unexpected NUL in input

Deleting the test.go file before building will allow it to build. But this is inconvenient because tools like github.com/codegangsta/gin which try to rebuild the package will fail.

DaveK · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-09 17:33:21Z

The repository was named [...]/test.go, and the default container directory for git clone is the repo name, so the containing directory is named test.go\.

From go help build:

If the package is main and file names are provided, the file name derives from the first file name mentioned, such as f1 for 'go build f1.go f2.go'; with no files provided ('go build'), the output file name is the base name of the containing directory.

In this case the output is a file called test.go. The problem is:

In the directory containing the package, .go, .c, .h, and .s files are considered part of the package

During a go build if the output from a previous build, test.go, exists, it will be treated as a source file, triggering the 'unexpected NUL in input' message.

The problem can be resolved by renaming the directory to avoid the build output having a name that will be considered part of the package.

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