Using Go lang on ubuntu 17.04

 ubuntu  ubuntu  go  newbie  install

I have been doing programming challenges using python and ruby on kattis and feel its time I tried solving them using a new language. How about go lang. I installed it via gvm I suppose it is to Go lang what rbenv is to ruby.

zsh < <(curl -s -S -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/moovweb/gvm/master/binscripts/gvm-installer)

run gvm version to confirm it installed correctly, I happen to use zsh instead of bash. The script inserts some new lines at the end of ~/.zshrc.

[[ -s "/home/cliff/.gvm/scripts/gvm" ]] && source "/home/cliff/.gvm/scripts/gvm"

Also needed an to install bison

sudo apt-get install bison

Just like installing ruby using rbenv, the install is a pain in terms of time. It installed go 1.4 pretty quickly but 1.5 calls for a bit of patience. I tried installing go1.5 through gvm and it didn’t work so I went for the latest major version when I was writing this.

gvm install go1.4 -B
gvm use go1.4
export GOROOT_BOOTSTRAP=$GOROOT
gvm install go1.8	

If all went well.

set it as default gvm use go1.8 --default

Test it out

cat > hello.go

paste this code in:

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
}

then execute it go run hello.go

links:

• install go lang from source
• 7 Easy steps to install Go (golang) on ubuntu