Install on Ubuntu

Using Ubuntu provided package

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install golang-go

Packages provided by Ubuntu are often outdated. A new version of Go is released every 6 months but Ubuntu distribution moves at a slower pace.

Newer versions are often available via ppa:gophers/archive package repository:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gophers/archive
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install golang-1.11-go

If those are still not recent enough, you can install binary parckages.

Using binary packages

These instructions work on most Linux distributions:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git curl wget
$ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go<versions>.gz

You can find the version list here.

# To install go1.12.4 use
$ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.12.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

# Untar the file
$ sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.12.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /usr/local/go
$ rm go1.12.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Setup on Linux

After installing the compiler you need to configure GOPATH environment variable.

Since Go 1.8, the GOPATH environment variable has the default value of $HOME/go, so you can skip setting it.

Create the go directory with mkdir $HOME/go.

Add the following two lines at the end of your ~/.bashrc file

export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH

$ source ~/.bashrc

Test the setup by running go version.

You should understand the effect of GOPATH.

More resources:

• https://golang.org/dl/ is official Go download page
• https://golang.org/doc/install are official installation instructions
• https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/Ubuntu are official installation instructions for Ubuntu