GOPATH Explained

As written in How to Write Go Code,

Go programmers typically keep all their Go code in a single workspace.

A workspace contains many version control repositories (managed by Git, for example).

Each repository contains one or more packages.

The GOPATH environment variable specifies the location of your workspace. That’s where you find the Go tools, where you develop and where you install 3rd party packages and binaries.

As of Go 1.8, if you don’t set a GOPATH, the default will be used. In older releases had to set it explicitly, but for ease of use, a default has been introduced. By default the value of GOPATH is

• $HOME/go on Unix-like systems
• %USERPROFILE%\go on Windows

This means that on macOS all your Go code will be put in the /go folder in your home directory.

This is the most common setup, but you might also choose to use your home directory as GOPATH.

Libraries installed using go get will be put in $GOPATH/src

Commands installed using go get will be put in $GOPATH/bin

Speaking of commands, you need to add $GOPATH/bin to your PATH to execute any binary installed in $GOPATH/bin, or you need to type $GOPATH/bin/the-command. Add this to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zshrc (or whatever shell you use) on *nix:

export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH

A quick way to know what is your current GOPATH is running

go env GOPATH

Changing the GOPATH is easy, add this to your shell config file:

export GOPATH=$HOME/another-go-path

(Here’s how to set the PATH or GOPATH on Windows)

References

https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/SettingGOPATH https://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GOPATH