If you're using plain Go, you get static binaries for free. If you're linking against so C library you might be out of luck. You can try setting CGO_ENABLED=0 in your environment, but I've had mixed success in practice.

I’ve only had success with CGO_ENABLED. If you depend on a C library, then obviously it won’t work, but mercifully few ago programs depend on C libraries (not having straight C ABI compatibility is a real blessing since virtually none of the ecosystem depends on C and its jerry rigged build tooling).

Well this is not what I'm seeing. I need to add -ldflags "-linkmode external -extldflags -static" to the go build command otherwise the binary doesn't run inside a scratch image.

CGO_ENABLED=0 has always worked for me in production, but it did come with some tradeoffs, notably, network performance.