As we all know, it took Google so long to get this. Can you overview on what are some of the technical challenges faced? Just curious. Thanks.
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Cloud Functions PM here. I can give some insight:
* We've been running a private early access preview/alpha since last August.
* This was our first compiled language on Cloud Functions, which came with its own set of challenges.
* It took us a while to find the right approach for supporting dependencies (both Go Modules and vendoring are supported). Unlike other providers, when you deploy your source code, Cloud Functions will automatically install dependencies listed in your go.mod file.
* Our testers gave us a ton of feedback that helped us polish the developer experience -- we identified and fixed many rough edges related to error messages during deployment/build and errors at runtime. Serverless products can be a bit opaque (since you can't just ssh into a machine), so getting this right is important.
I'd like to say that there was one big, interesting challenge that we had to tackle. But the reality is that we worked through many small details that only became apparent during testing. We wanted to address these so that we could offer a high quality experience for our public beta launch. We owe our alpha testers major credit for helping us find and solve issues.
Speaking of testers -- if you have feedback on the runtime, we'd love to hear from you in our Cloud Functions Beta Tester group [1].
[1] https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/getting-support#beta...
Is there a reason dependency management happens like this? We currently deploy Go Lambda functions in AWS with the help of the Serverless Framework and it just uploads the cross compiled Binary and not the whole project.
Why wouldn't the binary be the deployed unit in this case?
While it's a lot more work for them, and some may already have the infrastructure setup for deploying their own binary, I think having GCP handle the end-to-end there is more user friendly in general. I can quickly write a Cloud Function from any computer, without having to deal with setting up the tool chains. If you want to just run binaries, sounds like Cloud Functions isn't what you're looking for.
Maybe Google Native Client support?
No, it's not related to this. GOOS=linux and GOARCH=amd64 for GCF deployments. The sandboxing technology used is based on gVisor.
We're working on arbitrary binary deployments, you can sign up for that here: g.co/serverlesscontainers
Disclaimer: I work on GCP.
Thanks for the response.
Would like to see more granular triggers (event types). Especially with Firebase.
Also, would like to see more examples with firestore.
Which ones would you like to see? We're always looking for new use cases to support.
These are not specific to Go.
firebase authentication -> user account from disabled to enabled.
firebase authentication -> when a new phone number is associated.
Firestore -> field level triggers. Right now we have only document level trigger.
> Firestore -> field level triggers. Right now we have only document level trigger.
For what it's worth, if you have an onUpdate trigger on a Firestore database, the event you receive has the before & after state of the change, which would include field-level changes: https://firebase.google.com/docs/functions/firestore-events#...
Is there a specific use-case that this doesn't handle for you?
Note: Work at GCP, not on Functions.
well, if I have onUpdate trigger, which means my function is going to be triggered for every update on the document (even for the fields that I don't care)
You can say that triggering functions shouldn't cost you much, but thats not the way to do right. Correct me if I am wrong.
My use-case is simple. Want to get my CF triggered if the value of a particular field in a doc changes. Thanks.
Does this effort take you closer to the (supposed) goal of running arbitrary X86/ARM Linux binaries as cloud functions, or is that a completely different direction?
At the sandboxing level, it's already possible (you can upload any binary and fork/exec it from one of the supported languages). That's made possible by gVisor, which is the underlying sandbox technology used in GAE and GCF.
As for making that an actual product, we're working on that, too. Sign up for the alpha here:
g.co/serverlesscontainers
Disclaimer: I work on GCP.
Do you know of any alphas running for App Engine? I'm interested in testing.
There's a beta for Go 1.11 on App Engine...
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-developme...
If you didn't mean Go, specifically, then the alpha I linked above might be up your alley.
Nice!