MDmdaniel·Sep 27, 2024
The python-esque sandboxed language is Starlark: https://github.com/google/starlark-go#documentation
In Tcl 9.0google
starlark-go
Go2018–2026
google / starlark-go
starlark-go
Starlark in Go: the Starlark configuration language, implemented in Go
19Distinct people
23Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Starlark in Go: the Starlark configuration language, implemented in Go
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
- bazelbuild/starlark · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- meta/starlark-rust · linked in 3 of the same discussions
- openrundev/openrun · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:49:33 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year23 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-11-16 21:36:47 UTC to 2026-06-18 17:11:26 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
5 sourcesClace is built in go as a reverse proxy. Clace uses https://github.com/google/starlark-go as its configuration language. This allows full Hypermedia driven apps to be built in Clace, running within the main Clace process. For example:
clace app create --approve github.com/claceio/apps/system/disk_usage /disk_usage
clace app create --approve github.com/claceio/apps/utils/bookmarks /book
installs a du like tool and a bookmark manager. These are Hypermedia based apps using HTMX which run in Starlark. Works across Linux/OSX/Windows, with no dependencies to install. Not even containers are required for these apps.
In Show HN: Clace – Application Server with support for scaling down to zeroNumerical programs seems like a great fit for DSLs, say Starlark[0] ;-) That's what many C++ libs basically achieve with their heavy use of overloading, tmp, etc
[0] - https://github.com/google/starlark-go or alternatively https://github.com/facebook/starlark-rust
In Go is my hammer, and everything is a nailStarlark is awesome. We studied the language quite a lot, Alan Donovan did awesome work on its golang runtime [1] and there are more implementations in rust [2] and others.
Since the language and the backend allow to write deterministic functions, we found it's really suited well for automations written as durable functions. We implemented exactly that [3] over Temporal [4], though we also support Python as well among other runtimes.
[1] https://github.com/google/starlark-go
[2] https://github.com/facebook/starlark-rust
[3] https://autokitteh.com, https://github.com/autokitteh/autokitteh
[4] https://temporal.io
In Starlark LanguageI used go-starlark[1] to build a configurable reverse proxy and container manager for web app deployment [2]. Starlark is used to configure the proxy and it can be used to actually implement the backend apis.
One challenge with Starlark was not having exceptions, which by itself is a good thing. But not having go-style multi-value returns in Starlark makes error handling verbose. Since the errors originate in plugin calls to go code, the solution I implemented was a thread-local to store the last error and handle that on the next plugin call if the error was not explicitly handled in the code [3]. Worked out pretty well in my test apps. For example, this app [4] implements a bookmark manager, with minimal error handling required in the code.
Starlark is great for adding dynamic behavior for go applications. I was worried about performance
Read the rest
when I started but perf has not been a concern in the context of a web app server.
[1] https://github.com/google/starlark-go
[2] https://github.com/claceio/clace
[3] https://clace.io/docs/plugins/overview/#automatic-error-hand...
[4] https://github.com/claceio/apps/blob/main/utils/bookmarks/ap...