How To Install And Test Go On CentOS

Go also known as golang, is a compiled computer programming language developed by google. It is loosely based on the C language but designed to overcome some of its short comings.  It is a general purpose language and can be used from server-side development to games and streaming media.  It can easily be installed on a CentOS system.  This guide assumes you have at least a basic working installation of a Linux system.

Install Go on CentOS

Clean up repositories

yum clean all

Ensure everything is up to date

yum update

Change directories

cd /usr/src

Download the compiled package, you can find the most recent release on the downloads page.

wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.8.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Uncompress the archive

tar xfvz go1.8.3.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Move the binary and its applicable files to /usr/local

mv go /usr/local/

Export the following

export GOROOT=/usr/local/go

GOROOT defines the path you placed the Go package in

export GOPATH=$HOME/go-project

GOPATH tells go where your project is located, this can be anywhere

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

This appends both the GOPATH and GOROOT to your $PATH.  You can also add this to your .bash_profile to automatically export these variables upon logging in.

Verify Go Installation

By typing ‘go version’ it will give you a print out of the version you currently have running

# go version
 go version go1.8.3 linux/amd64

By typing ‘go env’ it will show the environment variables that are currently in use.

# go env
 GOARCH="amd64"
 GOBIN=""
 GOEXE=""
 GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
 GOHOSTOS="linux"
 GOOS="linux"
 GOPATH="/root/go-project"
 GORACE=""
 GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
 GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
 GCCGO="gccgo"
 CC="gcc"
 GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build167939199=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"
 CXX="g++"
 CGO_ENABLED="1"
 PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config"
 CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2"
 CGO_CPPFLAGS=""
 CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2"
 CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2"
 CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2"

Test a Go project

Create the project directory you exported earlier:

mkdir $HOME/go-project

Change to that directory:

cd $HOME/go-project

Create a new file:

nano hello.go

Insert the following lines:

package main
 import "fmt"
 func main() {
 fmt.Println("hello world")
 }

Execute the file:

go run hello.go

The file should print the following

# go run hello.go
hello world

That’s it, you should now have a working Go installation.