How to Install Go on Ubuntu 18.04

Go is a modern open source programming language developed by Google. Popular applications such as, Grafana, Docker, etc. are written in Go language. In this tutorial shown how to install Go on Ubuntu 18.04 system.

Prerequisites#

Before you going to start, you should have non-root user account with sudo privileges.

Installing Go on Ubuntu#

Follow the steps given below to install Go on Ubuntu 18.04:

Downloading Go tarball#

Currently, latest stable version of Go is version 1.12.5 at the time of writing this article. You can check latest version of Go Download page.

You can download Go tarball using wget or curl:

wget https://dl.google.com/go/go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Now, you should verify the tarball using below command:

sha256sum go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Output should something like this:

Output
aea86e3c73495f205929cfebba0d63f1382c8ac59be081b6351681415f4063cf go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Make sure the output should exact match with the hash value provided at the Go download page.

Extracting the Go tarball#

Now extract the downloaded tarball using following command inside /usr/local directory.

sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.12.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Setting Go Path Variable#

You should set path environment variable in order to find Go executable binaries by system. For that we need to open /.profile using below command:

sudo nano ~/.profile

Now add the below lines to it:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin:$GOPATH/bin

Save and close the file. After that run below command to reload running profile:

source ~/.profile

Verifying the Go Installation#

You can verify the Go installation by Go version command:

go version

Output should look like this:

Output
go version go1.12.5 linux/amd64

Demo Program in Go#

Below is given a simple Hello World program in Go language which will print “Hello World” message. Follow the below steps to build simple program.

First of all we will create a workspace directory for Go. You can get more details about go workspace directory visit this page:

mkdir $HOME/demo

Next, create a src directory inside it using below command:

mkdir -p $HOME/demo/src/hello

In this directory create a file named hello.go and add below content to it:

sudo nano ~/demo/src/hello/hello.go

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("Hello, World\n")
}

Now go back /demo/src/hello to build the file and issue go build command:

cd ~/demo/src/hello
go build

The above command will build an executable file with name hello.

You can run the program using executable using following command:

./hello

Output
Hello, World

Conclusion#

You have learned how to install Go on Ubuntu 18.04. If you have any queries feel free to comment below.