If I had a compiled Golang program that I wanted to install such that I could run it with a bash command from anywhere on my computer, how would I do that? For example, in nodejs
npm install -g express
Installs express such that I can run the command
express myapp
and express will generate a file directory for a node application called "myapp" in whatever my current directory is. Is there an equivalent command for go? I believe now with the "go install" command you have to be in the directory that contains the executable in order to run it
Thanks in advance!
As far as I know, there is no direct equivalent to npm install -g. The closest equivalent would not be go install, but go get. From the help page (go help get):
usage:
go get [-d] [-f] [-fix] [-insecure] [-t] [-u] [build flags] [packages]Get downloads and installs the packages named by the import paths, along with their dependencies.
By default, go get installs binaries to $GOPATH/bin, so the easiest way to make those binaries callable from everywhere is to add that directory to your $PATH.
For this, put the following line into your .bashrc (or .zshrc, depending on which shell you're using):
export PATH="$PATH:$GOPATH/bin"
Alternatively, you could also copy or link the executables to /usr/local/bin:
ln -s $GOPATH/bin/some-binary /usr/local/bin/some-binary
The closest analogue of this in Go would be go get. By default, it will fetch a Go package from a supplied repository URL, and requires a $GOPATH variable to be set in your shell so that Go knows where to store the packages (and subsequently where to find them when compiling code depending on go get-ted packages).
Example syntax:
$ go get github.com/user/repo
The behaviour supplied by npm's -g flag is default, and packages installed using go get are normally available globally.
See go get --help for more information about the command.
As mentioned by @helmbert, adding your $GOPATH to your $PATH is useful if you're installing standalone packages.
Using Go >= 1.11, if your current directory is within a module-based project, or you've set GO111MODULE=on in your environment, go get will not install packages "globally". It will add them to your project's go.mod file instead.
As of Go 1.11.1, setting GO111MODULE=off works to circumvent this behavior:
GO111MODULE=off go get github.com/usr/repo
Basically, by disabling the module feature for this single command, it will install to GOPATH as expected.
Projects not using modules can still go get normally to install binaries to $GOPATH/bin.
There's a lengthy conversation and multiple issues logged about this change in behavior branching from here: golang/go - cmd/go: go get should not add a dependency to go.mod #27643.
TL;DR at the bottom. I'm going to walk you through how I came to this conclusion, and why the more obvious solutions don't work.
Upon seeing this question, I thought "If I could set root's GOPATH=/usr, it would install things in /usr/bin/ and /usr/src!"
So I tried the obvious thing:
Add GOPATH=/usr to root's .bashrc.
And it worked!
Sort of.
Not really.
Turns out, sudo doesn't execute root's .bashrc. For "security" or something like that.
Do env_set or something in /etc/sudoers
Turns out, /etc/sudoers can only remove environment variables. There's no env_set directive.
(As far as I can find)
Dig through man sudoers.
Where does sudo get it's default set of environment variables from?
Well, the first one in the list is /etc/environment, so that's the one I used.
sudo echo "GOPATH=/usr" >> /etc/environment
sudo go get <repo>
Binaries will be put in /usr/bin, and sources will be put in /usr/src.
Running go as non-root will use GOPATH the "normal" way.