Go, also known as golang, is a modern, open-source programming language developed by Google. Go tries to make software development safe, fast and approachable to help you build reliable and efficient software.
This tutorial will guide you through downloading and installing Go from source, as well as compiling and executing a “Hello, World!” program on a Debian 10 server.
To complete this tutorial, you will need access to a Debian 10 server and a non-root user with sudo
privileges, as described in Initial Server Setup with Debian 10.
In this step, we’ll install Go on your server.
First, ensure your apt
package index is up to date using the following command:
- sudo apt update
Now install curl
so you will be able to grab the latest Go release:
- sudo apt install curl
Next, visit the official Go downloads page and find the URL for the current binary release’s tarball. Make sure you copy the link for the latest version that is compatible with a 64-bit architecture.
From your home directory, use curl
to retrieve the tarball:
- curl -O https://dl.google.com/go/go1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
Although the tarball came from a genuine source, it is best practice to verify both the authenticity and integrity of items downloaded from the internet. This verification method certifies that the file was neither tampered with nor corrupted or damaged during the download process. The sha256sum
command produces a unique 256-bit hash:
- sha256sum go1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
Outputgo1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
66d83bfb5a9ede000e33c6579a91a29e6b101829ad41fffb5c5bb6c900e109d9 go1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
Compare the hash in your output to the checksum value on the Go download page. If they match, then it is safe to conclude that the download is legitimate.
With Go downloaded and the integrity of the file validated, let’s proceed with the installation.
We’ll now use tar
to extract the tarball. The following flags are used to instruct tar
how to extract, view, and operate on the downloaded tarball:
x
flag tells it that we want to extract files from a tarballv
flag indicates that we want verbose output, including a list of the files being extractedf
flag tells tar
that we’ll specify a filename to operate onNow let’s put things all together and run the command to extract the package:
- tar xvf go1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
You should now have a directory called go
in your home directory. Recursively change the owner and group of this directory to root, and move it to /usr/local
:
- sudo chown -R root:root ./go
- sudo mv go /usr/local
Note: Although /usr/local/go
is the officially-recommended location, some users may prefer or require different paths.
At this point, using Go would require specifying the full path to its install location in the command line. To make interacting with Go more user-friendly, we will set a few paths.
In this step, we’ll set some paths in your environment.
First, set Go’s root value, which tells Go where to look for its files:
- nano ~/.profile
At the end of the file, add the following lines:
export GOPATH=$HOME/work
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$GOPATH/bin
If you chose a different installation location for Go, then you should add the following lines to this file instead of the lines shown above. In this example, we are adding the lines that would be required if you installed Go in your home directory:
export GOROOT=$HOME/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/work
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin
With the appropriate lines pasted into your profile, save and close the file.
Next, refresh your profile by running:
- source ~/.profile
With the Go installation in place and the necessary environment paths set, let’s confirm that our setup works by composing a short program.
Now that Go is installed and the paths are set for your server, you can ensure that Go is working as expected.
Create a new directory for your Go workspace, which is where Go will build its files:
- mkdir $HOME/work
Then, create a directory hierarchy in this folder so that you will be able to create your test file. We’ll use the directory my_project
as an example:
- mkdir -p work/src/my_project/hello
Next, you can create a traditional “Hello World” Go file:
- nano ~/work/src/my_project/hello/hello.go
Inside your editor, add the following code to the file, which uses the main Go packages, imports the formatted IO content component, and sets a new function to print “Hello, World!” when run:
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Printf("Hello, World!\n")
}
When it runs, this program will print Hello, World!
, indicating that Go programs are compiling correctly.
Save and close the file, then compile it by invoking the Go command install
:
- go install my_project/hello
With the program compiled, you can run it by executing the command:
- hello
Go is successfully installed and functional if you see the following output:
OutputHello, World!
You can determine where the compiled hello
binary is installed by using the which
command:
- which hello
Output/home/sammy/work/bin/hello
The “Hello, World!” program established that you have a Go development environment.
By downloading and installing the latest Go package and setting its paths, you now have a system to use for Go development. To learn more about working with Go, see our development series How To Code in Go. You can also consult the official documentation on How to Write Go Code.
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There’s a typo on the curl command above which means the SHA256 checksums won’t match. Users have to add the -L option to curl because the downloaded file otherwise is just a placeholder. Correct command should be:
curl -O -L https://dl.google.com/go/go1.12.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz
Hi, this was great and what I needed to do to install Go but what it didn’t mention was how to change permissions. I’m not sure if this is because of my system umask variable but the executables were not executable by default and I had to play around with the permissions. Perhaps next time I install Golang on Debian 10/11 I will have done it properly, thanks for the tutorial!
If you installed the latest version of Go (1.16 as of this comment), you may need to initialize Go modules in your directory to avoid getting this error:
all you need to do to initialize your directory to use Go modules, type this command:
then type this command:
it creates a single file called go.mod and then you should be able to carry on with the instructions.