install-go

Install any version of golang anywhere, even in a github action.

No need to wait for the last version of go to be integrated in actions/setup-go no need of any github action at all, even tip is available out of the box.

Usage

usage: install-go.pl [OPTIONS] VERSION [INSTALLATION_DIR]

• VERSION can be:

  • any version of go (1.9, 1.10.3);
  • a version without patch version specified, meaning the last one (1.11.x, 1.16.x);
  • tip, the latest HEAD.

• INSTALLATION_DIR the directory in which install the go/ directory. This directory must exist. It default to current directory.

• OPTIONS can be:

  • -e, --dont-alter-github-env: ignore GITHUB_ENV environment variable;
  • -p, --dont-alter-github-path: ignore GITHUB_PATH environment variable.

By default, if GITHUB_ENV environment variable exists AND references a writable file, GOROOT and GOPATH affectations are written to respectively reference INSTALL_DIR/go and INSTALL_DIR/go/gopath.
-e or --dont-alter-github-env option disables this behavior.

By default, if GITHUB_PATH environment variable exists AND references a writable file, INSTALL_DIR/go/bin and INSTALL_DIR/go/gopath/bin (aka $GOPATH/bin except if -e or no GITHUB_ENV) are automatically appended to this file.
-p (or --dont-alter-github-path) option disables this behavior.

See Github Actions / Environment variables for details.

Tested on Linux (and Github unbuntu-latest), FreeBSD, Github macos-latest and windows-latest, for amd64 arch only.

In a github action

jobs:
  test:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go-version: [1.18.x, 1.19.x, 1.20.x, 1.21.x, 1.22.x, 1.23.x, 1.24.x, tip]
        os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-latest]

    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}

    steps:
      - name: Setup go
        run: |
          curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maxatome/install-go/v3.7/install-go.pl |
              perl - ${{ matrix.go-version }} $HOME/go

      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Testing
        continue-on-error: ${{ matrix.go-version == 'tip' }}
        run: |
          go version
          go test ./... # or whatever you want with go executable

Install last version of go 1.24 in current directory:

then

Install go 1.22.12 in $HOME/go122 directory:

./install-go.pl 1.22.12 ~/go122

then

~/go122/go/bin/go version

Install tip in $HOME/my/path directory:

./install-go.pl tip ~/my/path

then

~/my/path/go/bin/go version

When tip has to be compiled (because an already built instance could not be retrieved), ~/my/path/go/bin/go is the gotip executable at the end of installation, but tip is also compiled and installed in ~/sdk/gotip/.

How does it work?

install-go.pl first checks if the requested version already exists in its environment.

If yes, it symlinks this version in the INSTALLATION_DIR directory.

If no, it downloads the binary version from golang.org, which is pretty fast.

For the tip case, install-go.pl tries to find the already built instance on Google storage servers. If it fails to find it, it downloads then compiles it. So be prepared to have a longer build due to this compilation stage in such cases.

Real full example of use

See go-testdeep action, only on linux but with linter and coverage steps.