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The Go gophernasigolang.com

Installing Go

Go ships as a single, self-contained toolchain: a compiler, formatter, test runner, and dependency manager, all behind one go command. There’s no separate package manager or build system to configure.

Install the toolchain

Section titled “Install the toolchain”

Pick the path for your OS:

  • macOS: brew install go, or download the .pkg installer from go.dev/dl.
  • Linux: download the tarball from go.dev/dl and extract it to /usr/local, then add /usr/local/go/bin to your PATH.
  • Windows: download the .msi installer from go.dev/dl; it sets up PATH for you.

Most Linux distributions also ship a golang package, but it often lags behind the latest release — the official tarball is usually the better choice for tutorials like this one.

Verify the install

Section titled “Verify the install”
Terminal window
go version

You should see something like go version go1.23.4 darwin/arm64. If you get “command not found”, double-check that go’s bin directory is on your PATH.

Editor setup

Section titled “Editor setup”

Any editor works, but the smoothest experience is:

  • VS Code with the official Go extension (gives you gofmt, go vet, and debugging out of the box).
  • GoLand if you want a full IDE with more built-in refactoring tools.

Both will auto-install gopls, Go’s language server, the first time you open a .go file.

Go modules, briefly

Section titled “Go modules, briefly”

Since Go 1.16, every project is a module — a tree of Go source files with a go.mod file at its root describing the module’s name and dependencies. You’ll create your first one in the next chapter.