## Introduction

Go is an open source project, distributed under a BSD-style license. This document explains how to check out the sources, build them on your own machine, and run them.

There are two distinct ways to experiment with Go. This document focuses on the `gc` Go compiler and tools (`6g`, `8g` etc.). For information on how to use `gccgo`, a more traditional compiler using the GCC back end, see Setting up and using gccgo.

## Environment variables

The Go compilation environment depends on three environment variables that you should set in your `.bashrc` or equivalent, plus one optional variable:

`$GOROOT`
  The root of the Go tree. Typically this is `$HOME/go` but it can be any directory.
`$GOOS` and `$GOARCH`
  The name of the target operating system and compilation architecture. Choices for `$GOOS` are `linux`, `freebsd`, `darwin` (Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6), and `nacl` (Native Client, an incomplete port). Choices for `$GOARCH` are `amd64` (64-bit x86, the most mature port), `386` (32-bit x86), and `arm` (32-bit ARM, an incomplete port). The valid combinations of `$GOOS` and `$GOARCH` are:

  | `$GOOS` | `$GOARCH`
  --- | --- | ---
  | `darwin` | `386`
  | `darwin` | `amd64`
  | `freebsd` | `386`
  | `freebsd` | `amd64`
  | `linux` | `386`
  | `linux` | `amd64`
  | `linux` | `arm`
  | `nacl` | `386`

`$GOBIN` (optional)
  The location where binaries will be installed. The default is `$HOME/bin`. After installing, you will want to arrange to add this directory to your `$PATH`, so you can use the tools.

Note that `$GOARCH` and `$GOOS` identify the target environment, not the environment you are running on. In effect, you are always cross-compiling.

Set these variables in your `.bashrc`. For example:

    export GOROOT=$HOME/go
    export GOARCH=amd64
    export GOOS=linux

Double-check them by listing your environment.

    $ env | grep '^GO'

## Ports

Go compilers support two operating systems (Linux, Mac OS X) and three instruction sets. The versions for Linux and Mac are equally capable except that the ARM port does not run on OS X (yet).

There are important differences in the quality of the compilers for the different architectures.

`amd64` (a.k.a. `x86-64`); `6g,6l,6c,6a`
  The most mature implementation. The compiler has an effective optimizer (registerizer) and generates good code (although `gccgo` can do noticeably better sometimes).
`386` (a.k.a. `x86` or `x86-32`); `8g,8l,8c,8a`
  Comparable to the `amd64` port. Not as well soaked but should be nearly as solid.
`arm` (a.k.a. `ARM`); `5g,5l,5c,5a`
  It's got a couple of outstanding bugs but is improving. Tested against QEMU and an android phone.

Except for things like low-level operating system interface code, the runtime support is the same in all ports and includes a mark-and-sweep garbage collector (a fancier one is in the works), efficient array and string slicing, support for segmented stacks, and a strong goroutine implementation.

See the separate `gccgo` document for details about that compiler and environment.

## Fetch the repository

If you do not have Mercurial installed (you do not have an `hg` command), this command:

    $ sudo easy_install mercurial

works on most systems. (On Ubuntu, you might try `apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev` first.) If that fails, visit the Mercurial Download page.

Make sure the `$GOROOT` directory does not exist or is empty. Then check out the repository:

    $ hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT

## Install Go

The Go tool chain is written in C. To build it, you need to have GCC, the standard C libraries, the parser generator Bison, `make` and the text editor `ed` installed. On OS X, they can be installed as part of Xcode. On Linux,

    $ sudo apt-get install bison gcc libc6-dev ed make

(or the equivalent on your Linux distribution).

To build the Go distribution, run

    $ cd $GOROOT/src
    $ make all

If `make all` goes well, it will finish by printing

    --- cd ../test
    N known bugs; 0 unexpected bugs

where N is a number that varies from release to release.

## Writing programs

Given a file `file.go`, compile it using

    $ 6g file.go

`6g` is the Go compiler for `amd64`; it will write the output in `file.6`. The ‘`6`’ identifies files for the `amd64` architecture. The identifier letters for `386` and `arm` are ‘`8`’ and ‘`5`’. That is, if you were compiling for `386`, you would use `8g` and the output would be named `file.8`.

To link the file, use

    $ 6l file.6

and to run it

    $ ./6.out

A complete example:

    $ cat >hello.go <<EOF
    package main

    import "fmt"

    func main() {
    	fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
    }
    EOF
    $ 6g hello.go
    $ 6l hello.6
    $ ./6.out
    hello, world
    $

There is no need to list `hello.6`'s package dependencies (in this case, package `fmt`) on the `6l` command line. The linker learns about them by reading `hello.6`.

To build more complicated programs, you will probably want to use a `Makefile`. There are examples in places like `$GOROOT/src/cmd/godoc/Makefile` and `$GOROOT/src/pkg/*/Makefile`. The document about contributing to the Go project gives more detail about the process of building and testing Go programs.

## Keeping up with releases

New releases are announced on the Go Nuts mailing list. To update an existing tree to the latest release, you can run:

    $ cd $GOROOT/src
    $ hg pull
    $ hg update release
    $ make all

## Community resources

For real-time help, there may be users or developers on `#go-nuts` on the Freenode IRC server.

The official mailing list for discussion of the Go language is Go Nuts.

Bugs can be reported using the Go issue tracker.

For those who wish to keep up with development, there is another mailing list, golang-checkins, that receives a message summarizing each checkin to the Go repository.