/go-course

A set of instructional classes on the Go language

Welcome to the Go Course!

Preparing for the Course

Installing Go

The first step is to download and install Go here

The most important part of installing Go is setting up the $GOPATH environment variable. You can set this variable to whatever folder you wish, but it must have a child src folder beneath it. For the purposes of this course, we will use the folder work.

Mac

  1. Create the ~/work folder and the src folder beneath it
  2. In the ~/.bash_profile file, add the following lines:
export GOPATH=$HOME/work
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

Windows

  1. Create the C:\work folder and the src folder beneath it

The installer should have added the appropriate environment variables, but just in case:

  1. Add GOPATH environment variable

    1. Go to the Control Panel -> System and Click on Advanced system settings
    2. In the dialog, click the Advanced tab
    3. Then click on the Environment Variables button
    4. Under System Variables, click the New button
    5. Enter GOPATH for the name, and path to your work folder
    6. Click OK

Workspace

The workspace is defined first by the location pointed to by GOPATH. Beneath the src folder is where projects are located.

Usually, to conform to best practices, beneath the src folder are the names of the organizations where the code is stored. Typically, these are SCMs, like github.com.

Beneath that folder is the name of the account owner for the SCM.

And finally, the last folder is the Go project folder.

$HOME/work                          // The main source folder (GOPATH)
    |
    |-- 📂 src
        |
        |--  📂 bitbucket.org
            |--  📂 nordstrom
                |-- order-guard     // Location of order-guard repo
        |-- 📂 github.com
            |--  📂 andrewlader
                |-- go-course       // Location of go-course work

Verify Go Installation

The easiest way to verify that Go was installed properly is to perform the following command from a terminal window:

go env

Look at the ouput and ensure that the GOPATH environment variable is set appropriately.

Class IDE

For this course, the IDE of choice is Visual Studio Code, which can be downloaded from here

Go Extension Plugin

Once this has been installed, install the Go Extension plugin using the following steps. Make sure you pick the one with over 900K downloads.

  1. Launch VS Code Quick Open (Command + P on a Mac, or Ctrl + P on a Windows machine)
  2. Type the following command and press Enter
ext install Go

You may be told to reload VS Code.

Configure Go Tools

Once the plugin has been installed, it is time to install some additional Go tools to help with editing.

  1. Launch the Command Palette (Command + Shift P on a Mac, or Ctrl + Shift + P on Windows)
  2. Type Go Install. The option Go: Install/Update Tools should be visible.
  3. Select this option, and wait while all of the Go tools are installed