Go/Installing

Installing Go

Linux

Visit the Go downloads page: https://golang.org/dl

Get the URL for the latest version of Go

Download go:

curl -O https://dl.google.com/go/go1.11.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Verify checksum:

sha256sum go*.tar.gz

Now you're ready to install Go:

tar xvf go*.tar.gz

sudo chown -R root:root ./go

sudo mv go /usr/local

Mac

brew install go
brew upgrade go

Goenv

Following the successful model of pyenv, you can use goenv to set up and manage various side-by-side versions of Go.

Link: https://github.com/syndbg/goenv

Paths

Edit your .profile to make the following changes to your environment variables:

• GOROOT - (by default, this is /usr/local, only change if you are using a different location) the location of your Go tree
• GOPATH - this is a list of paths in which Go code, packages, objects, and executables are stored
• PATH - update PATH to include the binary folder of both GOROOT and GOPATH

For example, if Go were installed to the home directory in ~/go/, and the user kept Go projects in ~/work/, these lines would be added to the user's .profile file:

export GOROOT=$HOME/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/work
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin

Testing

Now that Go is installed and the paths are set for your server, you can test to ensure that Go is working as expected.

Create Go workspace, which is where Go will build its files:

   mkdir $HOME/work

Create a directory hierarchy. Use my_project as an example top-level directory for this example, and a hello subfolder:

   mkdir -p work/src/my_project/hello

Now create a traditional hello world Go file:

   vim ~/work/src/my_project/hello/hello.go

Edit this file and add the contents:

hello.go:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("Hello, World!\n")
}

Now run this via:

go install my_project/hello

You should see your Go program when you type which hello:

$ which hello
/home/user/work/bin/hello

Now test:

$ hello
Hello, World!

Also see https://golang.org/doc/code.html (section: Your First Program)