Can't get Golang to work in Ubuntu

Question

Ok, So I've downloaded Go 1.1 and put it into $HOME/Documents/go.

Then, I've modified my .bashrc to be:

export GOPATH=$HOME/Documents/go                                                
export GOROOT=$GOPATH
export GOARCH=amd64
export GOOS=linux
export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$GOBIN

Than I've sourced the .bashrc, and tried:

jan@janpc:~$ go version
go version go1.1 linux/amd64

But I can't get it to compile or install any dependencies. Eg. I try to run my little test program:

jan@janpc:~/Documents/go/src/github.com/jan/scrypt$ go run scrypt.go 
warning: GOPATH set to GOROOT (/home/jan/Documents/go) has no effect
scrypt.go:9:3: cannot find package "github.com/dchest/scrypt" in any of:
    /home/jan/Documents/go/src/pkg/github.com/dchest/scrypt (from $GOROOT)
    ($GOPATH not set)
jan@janpc:~/Documents/go/src/github.com/jan/scrypt$ 

And when I try to install dependencies:

jan@janpc:~/Documents/go/src/github.com/jan/scrypt$ go get "github.com/dchest/scrypt"
warning: GOPATH set to GOROOT (/home/jan/Documents/go) has no effect
package github.com/dchest/scrypt: cannot download, $GOPATH must not be set to $GOROOT. For more details see: go help gopath

It compiles and works fine on mac. I can't figure out whats wrong with my config, if I try to remove $GOROOT or $GOPATH nothing works, and I don't know what else to set them to, other than the path to Go.

EDIT: There is no $GOROOT set on my mac. But if I remove $GOROOT on ubuntu, I get bunch of errors like these when I try to compile.

cannot find package "fmt" in any of:
    /usr/local/go/src/pkg/fmt (from $GOROOT)
    /home/jan/Documents/go/src/fmt (from $GOPATH)

Answer 1

Your enviroment variable you've set by

$ export GOROOT=$GOPATH

is a mistake. Nowhere is such setting required nor recommended. Actually, it cripples the environment seen by the Go build system.

Remove that setting, recreate your environment (. bashrc) or open a new terminal and it should work (if no other problems exists).

Additionally, if you're not cross compiling, I recommend to remove also these:

export GOARCH=amd64
export GOOS=linux

In short, proper exported GOPATH is the only environment variable which is, in the first approximation, really needed. Some more hints here.

EDIT: Okay, so I've downloaded the binary distribution (go1.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz). Quoting from README:

---

Binary Distribution Notes

If you have just untarred a binary Go distribution, you need to set the environment variable $GOROOT to the full path of the go directory (the one containing this README). You can omit the variable if you unpack it into /usr/local/go, or if you rebuild from sources by running all.bash (see doc/install.html). You should also add the Go binary directory $GOROOT/bin to your shell's path.

For example, if you extracted the tar file into $HOME/go, you might put the following in your .profile:

export GOROOT=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin

See doc/install.html for more details.

---

From this it's clear that you must have not followed properly the above instructions. Fix that and I hope it will work for you then.

Answer 2

To install go it is CRITICAL to first remove prior install (or you will get errors go build fails : runtime/mstkbar.go:151:10: debug.gcstackbarrieroff undefined)

dpkg -l|grep golang  #  if you see any, run following cmd to remove
sudo apt-get purge golang-*

Verify whether go is still installed

type go    # see if go is installed

typical output if go is installed

go is hashed (/usr/local/go/bin/go)

if go is installed remove it

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go     #  not just /usr/local/go/bin/go

download the latest tarball https://golang.org/dl/ expand and install

new_golang_ver=$(curl https://golang.org/VERSION?m=text 2> /dev/null)
cd /tmp
wget https://dl.google.com/go/${new_golang_ver}.linux-amd64.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf  ${new_golang_ver}.linux-amd64.tar.gz

define these environment variables in your ~/.bashrc

export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:${PATH}
export GOPATH=${HOME}/gopath  # typical value change at will
export PATH=${GOPATH}/bin:${PATH}

source your above new env var definitions

source ~/.bashrc  

verify install

go version

if installed correctly typical output

go version go1.12.1 linux/amd64

--- install is complete so lets compile a hello world ---

[[ ! -d $GOPATH ]] && mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/{bin,pkg,src} # if no dir then create
mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/mygithubname/play
cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/mygithubname/play

now paste following to create the go source file hello_world.go

tee hello_world.go  << WOW

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
}

WOW

compile your source code

go build hello_world.go 

./hello_world     #  run your executable 

hello, world

---

to understand how to structure your go source code see https://golang.org/doc/code.html

Fix the missing package error

You also asked how to fix the missing dependency errors ... for example

scott@rapacious ~/other_src/gopath/src/github.com/bigeagle/gohop $ go build
hop/cipher.go:27:2: cannot find package "github.com/golang/snappy" in any of:
    /usr/local/go/src/github.com/golang/snappy (from $GOROOT)
    /home/scott/other_src/gopath/src/github.com/golang/snappy (from $GOPATH)
internal/logging.go:6:2: cannot find package "github.com/op/go-logging" in any of:
    /usr/local/go/src/github.com/op/go-logging (from $GOROOT)
    /home/scott/other_src/gopath/src/github.com/op/go-logging (from $GOPATH)

above error will happen even after your go install is setup OK ... just issue this to download and install the missing upstream dependency go packages (and the ones they might also reference recursively)

cd ~/Documents/go/src/github.com/jan/scrypt/ # cd into the source dir
go get -v -t ./...   #  -v  verbose
                     #  -t  also download any test only packages
go build

Answer 3

TLDR: Unset $GOROOT by running following command in your terminal export GOROOT=""

I had Go installed on Ubuntu 16.04 and everything was working fine.

Then by mistake I set the $GOROOT to $GOPATH following a tutorial, at which point my build started to fail saying:

warning: GOPATH set to GOROOT has no effect
cannot find package "fmt" in any of:
... (from $GOROOT) ($GOPATH not set)
cannot find package "io/ioutil" in any of:
imports runtime: cannot find package "runtime" in any of:
/home/mhsn/go/src/runtime (from $GOROOT)
($GOPATH not set)

Every solution I read was suggesting to not set this variable, and I wanted to unset this. I found the following fix to get it unset: export GOROOT="" in bash.

Having unset the $GOROOT back to empty which was recommended by everyone so go defaulted back to original path. And it fixed the issue for me and go build started to work again.

Answer 4

You should not set $GOROOT for normal installations.

Just type export GOROOT="" and it should fix your problem.