Installing go toolchain

Kaushal.Modi@fakeEmailToMakeValidatorHappy.com (Kaushal Modi) — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 01:33:47 -0500

“Installing” go is simply extracting its release archive, putting it somewhere in you $HOME and pointing GOROOT and PATH env vars to it.

Table of Contents

Installing go
Updating go

There are two reasons why I suggest installing go to anyone, whether they are Go developers, or not (like me).

You can then build amazing utilities like peco, hugo and noti.
It’s easy!

Installing `go` #

Below instructions are for installing go on a 64-bit GNU/Linux machine, and using tcsh shell. But similar steps should work for any other OS and shell.

Download the tar.gz for the latest linux-amd64 binaries from https://golang.org/dl/.
Extract it to some place in your $HOME. I extract it to ${HOME}/go/¹.
Create a directory where you would want to install the go packages.
```
mkdir -p ~/go.apps
```

Set the following environment variables², and also save them to your shell config:

setenv GOROOT ${HOME}/go # go root
setenv GOPATH ${HOME}/go.apps # for go applications

Add the ${GOROOT}/bin and ${GOPATH}/bin directories to your $PATH.

Now you can install any go application!

For instance, noti is a nice little utility that triggers an alert (desktop popup, Pushbullet notification, etc.) when a process finishes. From its installation notes, you just run the below to install it:

go get -u github.com/variadico/noti/cmd/noti

Apart from the go applications I suggested here, go out and explore more – go get them 😁

Updating `go` #

Delete the existing $GOROOT directory (not GOPATH!)
```
rm -rf ~/go # as that is my GOROOT
```
Download the tar.gz for the latest linux-amd64 binaries.
Extract it to the same $GOROOT (~/go in my case).

I prefer to not add the version number to my go installation folder. That way, when I want to update it, I simply rm -rf it and put in the new version.. and I don’t need to update GOROOT or PATH. ↩︎
You can refer to these official go references [ 1 ], [ 2 ] for further information on these variables. ↩︎

toolchain on A Scripter's Notes

Installing go toolchain

Installing go #

Updating go #

Installing `go` #

Updating `go` #