// the find
protomaps/go-pmtiles
Single-file executable tool for working with PMTiles archives
go-pmtiles is a CLI and Go library for creating, serving, and manipulating PMTiles archives — a single-file format for storing map tile pyramids. It targets developers building maps who want to self-host or push tiles to cloud storage without running a tile server. The Caddy plugin means you can serve tiles directly from S3 or GCS with no backend process.
1. The format design is smart: a single file on object storage replaces an entire tile server, and range requests handle on-demand tile fetching without unpacking the archive. 2. Test coverage is solid — nearly every source file has a paired _test.go, including bitmap, cluster, directory, and sync logic. 3. The sync command (makesync.go) enables delta-syncing PMTiles archives, which matters when your planet.pmtiles is 100GB and you only want to push diffs. 4. GoReleaser + GitHub Actions gives you cross-platform binaries and a Docker image automatically — operationally clean.
1. The README is two sentences and a link to external docs — if that external site goes down or drifts, the repo itself is nearly useless as a reference. 2. The Caddy plugin lives in the same repo but has essentially no documentation or tests visible here; it's unclear what caching behavior or error handling it implements. 3. At 565 stars it's a niche tool with a small contributor base — if protomaps loses interest, you're maintaining a fork of a format-specific tool with limited community help. 4. No obvious way to do partial tile extraction by bounding box from the CLI without understanding the internals; the extract command exists but the UX for geographic subsetting isn't obvious from the repo alone.