How To Install Go Lang on CentOS 8/7 & RHEL 8/7
Go Lang is an open-source programming language developed by a team of Google engineers in 2007. Go language was designed to resolve the common criticisms of other languages while maintaining their positive characteristics and most widely used for writing servers these days.
Most notable projects using Go language are,
- Docker, a set of tools for deploying containers
- Juju, a service orchestration tool by canonical
- Dropbox moved the critical components to Go lang from python
- snappy, a package manager
System Requirements
Go binary packages are available for the below supported operating systems. Please ensure your system meets these requirements before installing the Go language.
Operating system | Architectures | Notes |
---|---|---|
FreeBSD 8-STABLE or later | x86_64 | Debian GNU/FreeBSD not supported |
Linux 2.6.23 or later with glibc | x86_64, arm | CentOS/RHEL 5 not supported |
Mac OS X 10.7 or later | x86_64 | use the clang or gcc† that comes with Xcode‡ for cgo support |
Windows XP or later | x86_64, 386 | use MinGW gcc†. No need for Cygwin or msys. |
This guide will help you to do the installation of Go Lang on CentOS 8/7 & RHEL 8 /7.
Download and Install Go Language
Before installing the Go language, update your system with the latest security patches to ensure the system is not vulnerable.
Update your system using the following command.
yum update -y
Install wget package.
yum install wget -y
Download the Go language binary package using the following command. Alternatively, you can visit the Go Language download page to download the latest version of Go.
wget https://golang.org/dl/go1.15.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz
Extract the archive to your desired location. Here, I choose to extract it on /usr/local
.
tar -zxvf go1.15.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz -C /usr/local/
Setup Go Environment variables
Now you would need to set up two important variables for Go, GOROOT
(PATH) and GOPATH
. Add /usr/local/go/bin
to your path variable.
GOROOT
You can add this by running the below command (temporary) or place the following command in /etc/profile
or $HOME/.bash_profile
file for persistent across sessions.
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
If you have installed Go on custom location replace /usr/local/go/bin/
with /path/to/bin/
directory.
GOPATH
GOPATH
is a Go environment variable for your project workspace. Let’s create a workspace directory called work
in your home directory.
mkdir $HOME/work
Set the GOPATH variable. You can add this by running the below command (temporary) or place the following command in /etc/profile
or $HOME/.bash_profile
file for persistent across sessions.
export GOPATH=$HOME/work
Verify Go Installation
Run the below command to see the version of the Go language.
go version
Output:
go version go1.15.5 linux/amd64
Check the Go environment variables we set in previous sections.
go env
Output:
GO111MODULE="" GOARCH="amd64" GOBIN="" GOCACHE="/root/.cache/go-build" GOENV="/root/.config/go/env" GOEXE="" GOFLAGS="" GOHOSTARCH="amd64" GOHOSTOS="linux" GOINSECURE="" GOMODCACHE="/root/work/pkg/mod" GONOPROXY="" GONOSUMDB="" GOOS="linux" GOPATH="/root/work" GOPRIVATE="" GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct" GOROOT="/usr/local/go" GOSUMDB="sum.golang.org" GOTMPDIR="" GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64" GCCGO="gccgo" AR="ar" CC="gcc" CXX="g++" CGO_ENABLED="1" GOMOD="" CGO_CFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_CPPFLAGS="" CGO_CXXFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_FFLAGS="-g -O2" CGO_LDFLAGS="-g -O2" PKG_CONFIG="pkg-config" GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build604512806=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"
Create First Project
Assuming that you have a workspace called work
located in the $HOME
directory.
I logged in as the root user, in my case /root/work
is my workspace.
cd $GOPATH OR cd $HOME/work
Create a directory src/hello
under your workspace.
mkdir -p src/hello
Let’s create a simple program (hello) to test the Go installation.
vi src/hello/hello.go
Place the following content in the hello.go file.
package main import "fmt" func main() { fmt.Printf("Welcome To ITzGeek\n") }
Now, compile it with go command.
go install hello
go command will put an executable command (hello) inside the bin directory of your workspace. Execute the executable using the following command.
$GOPATH/bin/hello
You should get the following greeting text.
Welcome To ITzGeek
Conclusion
That’s all. You have successfully installed Go Lang on CentOS 8/7 & RHEL 8 /7.