Installation¶

Requirements¶

Go 1.26+
CGO_ENABLED=0 — the framework uses pure-Go SQLite (modernc.org/sqlite), no C compiler needed

Install the CLI (optional)¶

The burrow CLI scaffolds new projects, generates contrib-style apps, and wraps Tailwind v4 builds. It's not required to use the framework — you can go get the library directly — but it removes a lot of boilerplate:

go install github.com/oliverandrich/burrow/cmd/burrow@latest
burrow new myapp --module github.com/you/myapp
cd myapp && mise run setup && mise run dev

Without mise, use the go mod tidy && go run ./cmd/myapp flow the scaffold prints instead.

See Tooling for the full sub-command reference.

Create a Project¶

mkdir myapp && cd myapp
go mod init myapp
go get github.com/oliverandrich/burrow@latest

This creates a Go module and pulls the burrow package with all contrib apps. Import only what you need:

import (
    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow"
    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow/contrib/session"
    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow/contrib/auth"
    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow/contrib/healthcheck"
)

Key Dependencies¶

The framework builds on these libraries — you'll interact with them when building apps:

Library	Purpose
Chi v5	HTTP router and middleware (stdlib-compatible)
Den	Object-document mapper (ODM) with SQLite and PostgreSQL backends
`html/template`	Go's standard template engine with auto-escaping
urfave/cli	CLI flags, env vars, subcommands

Verify¶

Create a minimal main.go to check that everything works:

package main

import (
    "context"
    "log"
    "os"

    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow"
    "github.com/oliverandrich/burrow/contrib/healthcheck"
    _ "github.com/oliverandrich/den/backend/sqlite" // register sqlite:// scheme
    "github.com/urfave/cli/v3"
)

func main() {
    srv := burrow.NewServer(healthcheck.New())
    cmd := &cli.Command{
        Flags:  srv.Flags(nil),
        Action: srv.Run,
    }
    if err := cmd.Run(context.Background(), os.Args); err != nil {
        log.Fatal(err)
    }
}

go mod tidy
go run main.go
# time=... level=INFO msg="starting server" host=localhost port=8080 ...
# Visit http://localhost:8080/healthz/live → "ok"

See Quick Start for a more complete example.