Install Go

The Go language has been around for quite some time and one finds more and more programs written in Go. The Go compiler and tools can be installed using the packages of the Linux distribution, but the easiest way to have the latest version is to use the official compiled tools.

The version of the golang-go package in Debian stable, 1.11, is too old, so I installed the official binaries this way.

Go to https://golang.org/dl/ to find out what is the lastest version. Here, we’ll be using 1.15.7.

$ mkdir -p ~/install
$ cd ~/install
$ wget https://golang.org/dl/go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Copy the checksum in go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz.sha256 as sha256sum excepts it for checking:

0d142143794721bb63ce6c8a6180c4062bcf8ef4715e7d6d6609f3a8282629b3  go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Check the sum:

$ sha256sum -c go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz.sha256
go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz: OK

Prepare the installation directory:

$ cd /usr/local/
$ sudo rm -f go

Extract the tarball:

$ sudo tar xf ~/install/go1.15.7.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Rename the directory to add the version number and create a symbolic link:

$ sudo mv go go1.15.7
$ sudo ln -s go1.15.7 go

Update the PATH in ~/.bashrc :

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

Source it and check the version:

$ . ~/.bashrc
$ go version
go version go1.15.7 linux/amd64

The older versions can be purged from /usr/local or we can go back to a previous version by updating the symbolic link.

The defaut environment configuration of Go is used to let go get and others install binaires and modules into ~/go.