Install Go

There are 2 ways to install Golang on your workstation, using a packager manager, or by getting it directly from the official website. I recommend downloading it directly, if you want to guarantee that you get the latest version of Go. Package managers often ends up installing a slightly older version because there’s usually a delay for the latest versions of Go getting packaged up and made available to the various package managers.

Install Golang via a package manager

You can install go with your favourite package manager.

RHEL/CentOS:

dnf install golang

Ubuntu/Debain:

apt update
apt install golang

MacOS:

brew install golang

Windows:

winget install -e --id GoLang.Go.1.18

Verifying your Golang install

Once you’ve done the install, The go binary should be installed somewhere on your filesystem:

$ which go
/usr/local/go/bin/go
$ ls -l /usr/local/go/bin
total 37200
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  15610144 29 Mar 22:48 go
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   3429584 29 Mar 22:48 gofmt

Notice that we also get the gofmt binary installed as part of install Golang. That’s used for formatting your go code.

You should now be able to access go from your terminal:

$ go version
go version go1.20.3 darwin/amd64

$ go help

$ go version
go version go1.13.8 linux/amd64
$ go help
Go is a tool for managing Go source code.
Usage:
go <command> [arguments]
The commands are:
bug         start a bug report
 build       compile packages and dependencies
 clean       remove object files and cached files
 doc         show documentation for package or symbol
...