See the newer version of this article, “Installing the Go Programming language on Ubuntu 22.04“.
The Go programming language consistently ranks as one of the most popular languages in developer surveys. In fact, Kubernetes as well as most of the CNF projects are written in Go. And it compiles down to machine code, which has made it popular in containers like Docker where a single executable binary fits the execution model perfectly.
This article will detail the installation on Ubuntu 20.04 with a simple hello world validation.
Installation
First, download the latest 64 bit linux package from the download page. Unzip to the standard location, and run a quick check of the version.
cd /tmp
# find latest version using curl or by manually looking at download page
go_latest=$(curl -s https://go.googlesource.com/go | grep -Po "<li class=\"RefList-item\"><a href=\"/go/\+/refs/tags/go\d\.\d*\">go\K(\d\.\d*)</a></li>" | cut -d'<' -f1)
echo "Latest go release: $go_latest"
# download archive
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go${go_latest}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
# remove any older versions, extract new version
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go${go_latest}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
# check version
/usr/local/go/bin/go version
Environment
Before going further, make sure to set the GOPATH and PATH variables to your environment.
On Ubuntu, append the following to ~/.profile:
export GOPATH=$HOME/work export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH
Then create the subdirectories and source the profile so that your current environment is updated. Now you should be able to run go without needing to specify the path.
source ~/.profile echo $GOPATH mkdir -p $GOPATH
Hello World
Let’s start by going into the $GOPATH, and creating a source file.
mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/hello; cd $_
Create a file named $GOPATH/src/hello/hello.go
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
}
And then compile and run:
# compile go build hello.go # run executable $ ./hello hello, world
REFERENCES
https://golang.org/doc/install
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-go-1-6-on-ubuntu-16-04
https://tecadmin.net/install-go-on-ubuntu/#
NOTES
For statically linked
export CGO_ENABLED=0
On Windows
installer creates GOHOME and appends PATH
GOROOT=c:\go
PATH=$PATH;c:\go\bin
User should set new system var GOPATH=%userprofile%\go