If you find yourself fighting xcaddy in relation to your custom or proprietary build or development process, **it might be easier to just build Caddy manually!**
Caddy's [main.go file](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/blob/master/cmd/caddy/main.go), the main entry point to the application, has instructions in the comments explaining how to build Caddy essentially the same way xcaddy does it. But when you use the `go` command directly, you have more control over the whole thing and it may save you a lot of trouble.
The manual build procedure is very easy: just copy the main.go into a new folder, initialize a Go module, plug in your plugins (add an `import` for each one) and then run `go build`. Of course, you may wish to customize the go.mod file to your liking (specific dependency versions, replacements, etc).
The `xcaddy` command will use the latest version of Caddy by default. You can customize this for all invocations by setting the `CADDY_VERSION` environment variable.
-`--with` can be used multiple times to add plugins by specifying the Go module name and optionally its version, similar to `go get`. Module name is required, but specific version and/or local replacement are optional.
-`--replace` is like `--with`, but does not add a blank import to the code; it only writes a replace directive to `go.mod`, which is useful when developing on Caddy's dependencies (ones that are not Caddy modules). Try this if you got an error when using `--with`, like `cannot find module providing package`.
-`--embed` can be used to embed the contents of a directory into the Caddy executable. `--embed` can be passed multiple times with separate source directories. The source directory can be prefixed with a custom alias and a colon `:` to write the embedded files into an aliased subdirectory, which is useful when combined with the `root` directive and sub-directive.
If `--embed` is used without an alias prefix, the contents of the source directory are written directly into the root directory of the embedded filesystem within the Caddy executable. The contents of multiple unaliased source directories will be merged together:
You may also prefix the source directory with a custom alias and colon separator to write the source directory's contents to a separate subdirectory within the `embedded` filesystem:
If you need to work on Caddy's dependencies, you can use the `--replace` flag to replace it with a local copy of that dependency (or your fork on github etc if you need):
If you run `xcaddy` from within the folder of the Caddy plugin you're working on _without the `build` subcommand_, it will build Caddy with your current module and run it, as if you manually plugged it in and invoked `go run`.
Because the subcommands and flags are constrained to benefit rapid plugin prototyping, xcaddy does read some environment variables to take cues for its behavior and/or configuration when there is no room for flags.
-`CADDY_VERSION` sets the version of Caddy to build.
-`XCADDY_RACE_DETECTOR=1` enables the Go race detector in the build.
-`XCADDY_SETCAP=1` will run `sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep` on the resulting binary. By default, the `sudo` command will be used if it is found; set `XCADDY_SUDO=0` to avoid using `sudo` if necessary.
-`XCADDY_SKIP_BUILD=1` causes xcaddy to not compile the program, it is used in conjunction with build tools such as [GoReleaser](https://goreleaser.com). Implies `XCADDY_SKIP_CLEANUP=1`.
-`XCADDY_SKIP_CLEANUP=1` causes xcaddy to leave build artifacts on disk after exiting.
-`XCADDY_GO_BUILD_FLAGS` overrides default build arguments. Supports Unix-style shell quoting, for example: XCADDY_GO_BUILD_FLAGS="-ldflags '-w -s'". The provided flags are applied to `go` commands: build, clean, get, install, list, run, and test
