Installing Go on Ubuntu

Go is an open-source programming language, initially developed by a team at Google and becoming increasingly popular for many applications. The project is backed by many contributors from the open-source community.

This tutorial will guide you through the download and installation of the Go programming language on a Ubuntu Bionic Beaver server. At the end of this guide, you will create your first Go application.

Before you start

To complete the actions presented below, you must have:

• A Scaleway account logged into the console
• Owner status or IAM permissions allowing you to perform actions in the intended Organization
• An SSH key
• An Instance running on Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04)
• sudo privileges or access to the root user

Installing Go

1. Connect to your Instance using SSH.

   ssh root@your_server_ip

2. Update your APT package cache and upgrade the software already installed on the Instance to the latest release.

   apt update && apt upgrade -y

3. Install the Go programming language from the apt repository:

   apt install golang -y

4. Make sure Go is installed by running the following command:

   go version

   You should see an output like the following:

   root@gopher:~# go version
   go version go1.22.2 linux/arm64

5. Set the GOPATH for your environment:

   echo "GOPATH=$HOME/golang" >> ~/.bashrc
   echo "export GOPATH" >> ~/.bashrc
   echo "PATH=\$PATH:\$GOPATH/bin # Add GOPATH/bin to PATH for scripting" >> ~/.bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc

Creating a Hello World Go Application

1. Start by creating a workspace, where you will store the files of your project.
   mkdir -p $HOME/golang/src/hello-world

   Note

   Go uses a strict Workspace layout. You should follow the guidelines to make sure your application will work.

2. Open a text editor and create a file hello-world.go in the working directory. Then copy and paste the following content into it:
   package main
   
   import "fmt"
   
   func main() {
       fmt.Printf("Hello world! This is my first Go program.\n")
   }

3. Run the code directly in Go with the command go run:
   go run hello-world.go

4. Compile the application if you want to have a program directly available as a binary to distribute it.
   go install hello-world

5. Once the application is compiled, you can launch it by typing hello-world in your terminal.
   bill@golang:~# hello-world
   Hello world! This is my first Go program.

6. Use which to discover the location of the binary. It will return the file path:
   bill@golang:~# which hello-world
   /home/bill/golang/bin/hello-world

Creating a Go web application

Go provides the net/http package, which makes it very easy to create web applications:

Create a new workspace and add the following content to the main.go.

go
package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "net/http"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", WorldServer)
    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

func WorldServer(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    fmt.Fprintf(w, "Hello, %s!", r.URL.Path[1:])
}

You now have a working Go development environment. If you want to learn more about writing code in Go, you can follow the interactive tutorial.