feat: Add GopherCon Africa 2026 talk on //go:embed internals

sites/ainsley-clark/content/conferences/gophercon-africa-2026/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
+title: "//go:embed: From Comment to Binary"
+description: How //go:embed turns a comment into bytes in your binary, from the lexer to the linker, plus the tradeoffs and patterns for using it in production.
+heading: GopherCon Africa 2026
+talkTitle: "//go:embed: From Comment to Binary - Linker Internals, Tradeoffs and Production Patterns"
+lead: This talk follows a single //go:embed directive through go build, the compiler and the linker, then looks at what embedding costs you and how to test it.
+weight: 1
+publishdate: 2026-10-29
+pageColour: white
+draft: true # Flip to false ~a day before the talk to publish.
+tags:
+  - Go
+  - Compiler
+  - Internals
+buttonName: View Talk
+event:
+  name: GopherCon Africa
+  date: 2026-10-30
+  # location: Venue, City
+  url: https://gophercon.africa/
+# Uncomment once files/slides.pdf has been added.
+# slides:
+#   path: files/slides.pdf
+#   name: gophercon-africa-2026-ainsley-clark.pdf
+#   text: Download slides
+sources:
+  - title: 1. Mastering Embed in Go 1.16
+    url: https://lakefs.io/blog/working-with-embed-in-go/
+    description: Barak Amar. lakeFS blog.
+  - title: "2. golang/go#41191: embed, cmd/go: add support for embedded files"
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/41191
+    description: Russ Cox, 2 September 2020. Proposal accepted for Go 1.16.
+  - title: 3. (*Context).Import
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/go/build/build.go
+    description: The go command walking a package directory and noting every //go:embed it passes.
+  - title: 4. readGoInfo
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/go/build/read.go#L374-L392
+    description: The scan that reads on past the imports and picks out //go:embed comments as tokens.
+  - title: 5. resolveEmbed
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/cmd/go/internal/load/pkg.go#L2165
+    description: Patterns turned into real files and trees against the filesystem.
+  - title: 6. The embedcfg struct
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/cmd/go/internal/work/exec.go#L893-L906
+    description: The struct the go command builds from the Patterns and Files maps, and marshals to JSON.
+  - title: 7. Writing embedcfg
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/cmd/go/internal/work/gc.go#L148-L152
+    description: Writing embedcfg to the work directory and passing -embedcfg to the compiler.
+  - title: 8. checkEmbed
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/cmd/compile/internal/noder/noder.go#L462-L481
+    description: The switch nearly every //go:embed error message comes from.
+  - title: 9. WriteEmbed
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.27.1/src/cmd/compile/internal/staticdata/embed.go#L101-L134
+    description: The compiler laying the variable out in memory and writing the file's bytes as static data.
+  - title: "10. Draft design: Go command support for embedded static assets"
+    url: https://go.googlesource.com/proposal/+/master/design/draft-embed.md
+    description: Russ Cox & Brad Fitzpatrick, July 2020.
+  - title: "11. golang/go#41190: io/fs: add file system interfaces"
+    url: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/41190
+    description: The companion proposal that makes embed.FS compose with the rest of the standard library.
+  - title: 12. Embedding in other languages
+    url: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/14637
+    description: D's import() and Zig's @embedFile are both expressions; Go shipped a file system.
+  - title: 13. testing/fstest
+    url: https://pkg.go.dev/testing/fstest
+    description: TestFS and MapFS in the standard library.
+---
+
+Everyone loves //go:embed: two lines and your templates, migrations and web assets ship inside a single binary. But how does a comment end up as bytes in your program? This talk follows one directive through every stage of go build: package discovery, the lexer, pattern resolution and embedcfg, the parser's syntax tree, the compiler's static data and finally the linker. It then covers what embedding costs you, from leaked secrets with the all: prefix to rebuilding for every change, and how to test embedded file systems with os.DirFS, fs.FS and testing/fstest.