How to install the Go programming language on OSX Snow Leopard

Assumptions

Before you follow these steps, you should have XTools installed. You should also be running Snow Leopard as your OS.

These instructions should also work for Leopard, although you may have to use GOARCH=386.

All of these steps will be performed in Terminal

Step 1 - Directories and Environment Variables

Google Go has a number of environment variables that are required when running: $GOROOT, $GOOS, $GOARCH and $GOBIN. You can find out more about these variables at by reading Go’s general installation document.

For our purposes, we are going to use the following settings:

GOROOT=$HOME/Go<br /> GOOS=darwin<br /> GOARCH=amd64<br /> GOBIN=$HOME/bin<br /> You can use the following command to automatically place them at the end of your ~/.bashrc file:

cat >> ~/.bashrc <<EOF

export GOROOT=\$HOME/Go
export GOOS=darwin
export GOARCH=amd64
export GOBIN=\$HOME/bin
EOF

Now use the source command to apply those changes to your current session:

source ~/.bashrc

Also, we have to create the bin directory and add it to your system paths:

mkdir -p $HOME/bin
echo "$HOME/bin" > go
sudo mv go /etc/paths.d/
eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`

For more information on the /etc/paths.d/ setup in Leopard, you can read this blog post on paths.

Step 2 - Getting The Source

Google is using Mercurial to handle the source code. If you don’t already have it installed, you can install it quickly and easily with the following command:

sudo easy_install mercurial

This will automatically install the mercurial package on your system. Once that is done, you can run the hg command to checkout Go’s source:

hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT

The source code will be checked out to the $GOROOT that we specified in the .bashrc settings.

Step 3 - Installation

From this point on, you’ve done the custom OSX bits. The following are essentially the same instructions as Go’s official installation document.

Head over to the $GOROOT src directory and then run all.bash, the installation script:

cd $GOROOT/src
./all.bash

Once the installation is done, you should see the following output at the end:

--- cd ../test
N known bugs; 0 unexpected bugs

This means you’re ready to start writing and compiling Go. Congratulations!

Optional Step 4 - Quick compile and linking script

I created a very simple bash script called go that compiles and links the file in one step. You’re welcome to add this as an addition to your commands. Just run the following command to set it up:

cat >> $GOBIN/go <<EOF
#! /bin/bash
if [ ! \$1 ]; then
  echo "Usage: go name_of_file (without the .go)"
  exit
fi
6g \$1.go
6l \$1.6
EOF
chmod +x $GOBIN/go

Now you can compile and link in one go ( *snicker* ). If your filename is hello.go, you can use it like this:

go hello

Nice ‘n easy. :)