Go is an exciting language made by Google for systems programming. This article will help you get up and running with the Go compiler tools.
First you need to install the compilers.
$ sudo apt-get install golang golang-go.tools
golang-go.tools contains some useful tools that aren't part of the standard
Go distribution.
Create a folder in your home directory for your Go code to live in. I use
~/go.
$ mkdir -p ~/go/{bin,pkg,src}
bin contains go binaries that are created from go get or go install.
pkg contains static (.a) compiled versions of go packages that are not go
programs. src contains go source code.
After you create this, add this and the following to your zsh config:
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/go/bin:$GOPATH/bin
This will add the go compilers to your $PATH as well as programs you install.
Rehash your shell config (I use
a resource
command for this) and then run:
$ go env
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCHAR="6"
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/xena/go"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/lib/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/lib/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
TERM="dumb"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-g -O2 -fPIC -m64 -pthread"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"
This will verify that the go toolchain knows where the go compilers are as well
as where your $GOPATH is.
To test the go compilers with a simple todo command, run this:
$ go get github.com/mattn/todo
$ todo add foo
$ todo list
☐ 001: foo
For Vim integration, I suggest using the vim-go plugin. This plugin used to be part of the standard Go distribution.
To install:
Plugin 'fatih/vim-go' to the plugins part of your vimrc.
$ vim +PluginInstall +qall
$ vim +GoInstallBinaries +qall
This will install the go oracle and the go autocompletion daemon gocode as well
as some other useful tools that will integrate seamlessly into vim. This will
also run gofmt on save to style your code to the standard way to write Go
code.
Effective Go and the language spec provide a nice overview of the syntax.
The Go blog contains a lot of detailed articles covering advanced and simple Go topics. This page has a list of past articles that you may find useful.
The Go standard library is a fantastic collection of Go code for solving many problems. In some cases you can even write entire programs using only the standard library. This includes things like web application support, tarfile support, sql drivers, support for most kinds of commonly used crypto, command line flag parsing, html templating, and regular expressions. A full list of the standard library packages can be found here.
Variable type declarations will look backwards. It takes a bit to get used to but makes a lot of sense once you realize it reads better left to right.
For a nice primer on building web apps with Go, codegangsta is writing a book on the common first steps, starting from the standard library and working up. You can find his work in progress book here.
Go has support for unit testing baked into the core language tools. You can find information about writing unit tests here.
When creating a new go project, please resist the urge to make the folder in your
normal code folder. Drink the $GOPATH koolaid. Yes it's annoying, yes it's the
language forcing you to use its standard. Just try it. It's an amazingly useful
thing once you get used to it.
Learn to love godoc. Godoc lets you document code like this. This also includes an example of the builtin unit testing support.
This article was posted on M01 28 2015. Facts and circumstances may have changed since publication. Please contact me before jumping to conclusions if something seems wrong or unclear.
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The art for Mara was drawn by Selicre.
The art for Cadey was drawn by ArtZora Studios.