danger89: from the page that jan Swedneck linked:

> If you plan to use go-ipfs as a package in your own Go application, you can take any of three main approaches:

- Use go-ipfs to run IPFS directly in your own process. See the CoreAPI constructor.
- Use go-ipfs-http-client (opens new window)to communicate with an IPFS daemon in a separate process via its HTTP API (**this is what go-ipfs does if a daemon is already running**). See the http client.
- Use other Go packages to communicate with the HTTP API directly. See the HTTP API reference.