How To Install Go 1.16 on Debian 10/9/8

What is Go ?

Go is an open-source programming language developed by a team at Google. It provides easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. This language is designed for writing servers, that’s why it is using widely these days. At the update time of this tutorial Go 1.16 is the latest version available.

This tutorial will help you to install Go 1.16 on your Debian 10, Debian 9, Debian 8 and Debian 7 systems.

Step 1 – Install Go on Debian

You need sudo access or root access to your system for Go installation. Now login to your Debian system using shell or ssh and upgrade to apply the latest security updates there.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade

Now download the Go language binary archive file using the following link. To find and download latest version available or 32 bit version go to official download page.

wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.16.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Now extract the downloaded archive and install it to the desired location on the system. For this tutorial, I am installing it under /usr/local directory. You can also put this under the home directory (for shared hosting) or other location.

tar -xvf go1.16.4.linux-amd64.tar.gz 
sudo mv go /usr/local 

Step 2 - Setup Go Environment

After completing step 1, Now configure the Go language environment variables for your project. Commonly you need to set 3 environment variables as GOROOT, GOPATH and PATH.

GOROOT is the location where Go package is installed on your system.

export GOROOT=/usr/local/go 

GOPATH is the location of your work directory. For example my project directory is ~/Projects/Proj1 .

export GOPATH=$HOME/Projects/Proj1 

Now set the PATH variable to access go binary system wide.

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

All the above environment will be set for your current session only. To make it permanent add above commands in ~/.profile file.

Step 3 - Verify Go Installation

Finally, you have successfully installed and configured go language on your system. First, use the following command to check the installed Go version.

go version

go version go1.16.4 linux/amd64

Now, also verify all configured environment variables using following command.

go env 

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCACHE="/root/.cache/go-build"
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="/home/tecadmin/Projects/Proj1"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build661994963=/tmp/go-build"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"