Install on Mac OS

Using official binaries

Download .pkg installer from https://golang.org/dl/ and run it.

Using Homebrew

• if you don’t have Homebrew installed, install it following the instructions
• brew install go

Setup on Mac OS

After installing the compiler you need to configure GOPATH environment variable.

Since Go 1.8, the GOPATH environment variable has the default value of $HOME/go, so you can skip setting it.

Create the go directory with mkdir $HOME/go.

Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile file:

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

Load the changes with source ~/.bash_profile or launch a new terminal for the changes to take effect.

Explanation

File ~/.bash_profile is executed at startup by the default bash shell.

By adding commands there we make them available inside every shell session.

Adding $GOPATH/bin to PATH is a matter of convenience. When you install Go programs with go get ..., you will be able to invoke them without typing the full path. For example, you would run gotest1 rather than $HOME/go/bin/gotest1.

More configuration

To quickly cd to a directory with Go source code I add bash alias to ~/.bash_profile:

alias cdgo="cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/kjk"