How to Install GoLang 1.8 on Debian 8/7

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 1.8 is the latest version available.

This tutorial will help you to install Go 1.8 on your Debian 8 and Debian 7 systems.

Step 1 — Install Go Language

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 latest security updates there.

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

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

$ wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.8.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.

$ sudo tar -xvf go1.8.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 above environment will be set for your current session only. To make it permanent add above commands in ~/.profile file.

Step 3 — Verify Go Install

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

$ go version

go version go1.8 linux/amd64

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

$ go env

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
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"