/golive

golive is a lightweight and improved live-server alternative written in Go

Primary LanguageGoApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

golive

golive is a lightweight and improved live-server alternative written in Go. It allows you to serve a directory and its subpaths over HTTP or HTTPS with ease. Can be used for local web development, production static-site serving, or as a network file host.

Screen Recording

Installation

  1. Make sure you have Go installed on your system.

  2. Make sure you've the $GOPATH/bin directory added to your system's PATH.

  3. Run the following command to install golive:

    go install github.com/debdut/golive

Alternatively, you can download the binary from releases and use it.

Usage

To serve the current directory on the default port (80):

golive

To serve a specific directory on a custom port:

golive -d /path/to/directory -p 8080

To enable browser caching:

golive -c

To start in server mode on port 80 and suppress browser opening:

golive -s

To serve over HTTPS with a custom port and SSL certificate:

golive -https-port 8443 -cert /path/to/cert.pem -key /path/to/key.pem

For more options and information, run:

golive -h

Command-line Options

golive supports the following command-line options:

  • -q, --quiet: Stops golive from opening the browser when started.
  • -c, --cache: Allows browser caching of pages. Can lead to stale results, off by default.
  • -p, --port: Sets the port to serve on (default: 80).
  • -v, --version: Prints the version of golive.
  • -d, --dir: Selects the directory you want to serve. Serves all subpaths that the user has read permissions for (default: ./).
  • -s, --serve: Starts in server mode on port 80 and in quiet mode.
  • --https-port: Sets the HTTPS port to serve on.
  • --cert: Specifies the path to the SSL certificate file.
  • --key: Specifies the path to the SSL key file.
  • -H, --headers: Comma-separated list of custom headers to add (e.g., 'X-Custom-Header:value,Another-Header:another_value').

For more information and examples, run:

golive -h

Credits

golive was inspired by and built upon the boilerplate code from go-live by Anton Sankov. The original project provided a nice basic HTTP server, but I needed additional features like live reload and HTTPS support. Implementing these features required significant modifications and 4x expansion of the original codebase. I forked because I wanted to take it in a new direction that fit's my purpose.