Introduction to Go
last modified April 11, 2024
This is an introduction to the Go programming language. Go first appeared in 2009. Go is developed by Google.
Go
Go is an open source programming language that makes it easy to build simple, reliable, and efficient software. Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language.
Go is similar to C. It is memory safe and has garbage collection. Go has high speed compilation and excellent tooling support. It contains built-in primitives for concurrency.
Go installation
First, we download the binaries from the https://golang.org/doc/install page.
$ ls go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz
We have go version 1.22.2.
$ rm -rf /usr/local/go && tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.22.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz
We extract the archive to /usr/local/.
$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin
We add /usr/local/go/bin to the PATH, so that we can
run the Go tool without having to specify the full path.
> winget install GoLang.Go
On Windows, we can use the winget package manager.
The Go tool
The go tool provides the standard way to fetch, build, and install Go packages and commands.
$ go version go version go1.22.2 linux/amd64
With the version option, we get the version of Go.
> go version go version go1.22.2 windows/amd64
This is the output on Windows.
| command | description |
|---|---|
go build |
compiles packages and dependencies |
go env |
prints Go environment information |
go get |
adds dependencies to current module and installs them |
go install |
compiles and installs packages and dependencies |
go list |
lists packages and modules |
go run |
compiles and runs a Go program |
go version |
prints Go version |
This is a partial list of Go tool commands.
Go first example
We create our first example.
$ mkdir simple $ cd simple
We create a project directory and relocate there.
$ go mod init zetcode.com/simple
We initiate a Go module.
package main
import "fmt"
func main() {
fmt.Println("Go simple example")
}
This is a simple Go program, which prints a message to the console.
$ go run main.go Go simple example
We can compile and execute the program in one go with go run
command.
$ go build $ ls go.mod main main.go $ ./main Go simple example
We can create an executable program with go build.
$ go install $ ls ~/go/bin/ main
With the go install command, we install the binary to the special
GOPATH directory, which defaults to $HOME/go on Unix.
Source
The Go Programming Language Specification
In this article we have introduced the Go language.
Author
List all Go tutorials.