Getting Go

It’s quite easy to install the Go language on Ubuntu and similar Linuxes. In fact, Ubuntu has an old version straight out of apt-get.

However, if you want to install the latest, maybe you want to download the latest and install it in a clean way. Here’s how I chose to do it - YMMV.

#!/bin/bash -xe

V=go${1:-1.1}

if fgrep $V /usr/local/go/VERSION; then
    echo Go $V is already installed in /usr/local/go
    echo To uninstall or upgrade, first
    echo "  sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go"

else
    echo Installing Go programming language $V ...
    set -e

    cd /usr/local
    sudo rm -rf go

    case `uname -m` in
        x86_64)      A=linux-amd64 ;;
        368|586|686) A=linux-386   ;;
        *) echo unsupported:
           uname -m
           exit 1
           ;;
    esac

    U=http://go.googlecode.com/files/$V.$A.tar.gz
    echo Downloading and installing $U...
    curl -sSf $U | sudo tar zxvf -
fi

echo Add Go to path eg
echo export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH

It’s useful to have ‘gorun’ installed too…

#!/bin/bash -e

mkdir -p tmp-gorun.$$
cd tmp-gorun.$$

export GOPATH=$PWD
export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin

go get launchpad.net/gorun
[ -x bin/gorun ] || echo "Failed to build gorun"
sudo rsync -av bin/gorun /usr/local/bin
cd ..
rm -rf tmp-gorun.$$

This includes the gorun tool, allowing scripts to start with #!/usr/local/bin/gorun.

Raspberry Pi Go

Now, the next task is how to build the Go tools for Arm on a Raspberry Pi… Here are some useful instructions.

Once your Pi is running Rasbian, you might like to follow these steps:

sudo apt-get install -y mercurial gcc libc6-dev
hg clone https://code.google.com/p/go
cd go/src
bash -x ./all.bash

Ref: Installing Go from source

Edit: Updated for Go 1.1