mitchellh/go-homedir

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases archived

Adoption not part of the score

1419 stars · 131 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A small Go library that detects the user's home directory and expands `~` in paths without requiring cgo. It exists because the standard `os/user` package needs cgo on Darwin, which breaks cross-compilation.

Use cases

• get the user's home directory in Go without cgo
• expand ~ in file paths to the home directory
• cross-compile Go programs that need the home directory
• replace os/user home directory lookups in Go tools
• resolve user home directory portably across Linux, macOS, and Windows

When to choose

• you need home directory detection in a Go program that must cross-compile
• you want to expand ~ paths without pulling in cgo dependencies
• you need a tiny, dependency-free utility for path expansion

When to avoid

• you only target Linux, where os/user works without cgo
• you need more than home directory detection or ~ expansion
• you need a project with active issue triage and new feature development

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

file-system developer-tools developer-tools cross-platform go cross-platform windows bsd home-directory tilde-expansion no-cgo cross-compilation go-library path-expansion command-line linux macos

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