Installing Go

OS X

Download an install the darwin binary from https://golang.org/dl/. Or, use Homebrew with $ brew install go.

If you need to update to 1.8, you can use $brew update go.

Windows

Download and run the installer found at http://golang.org/doc/install

Linux

Ubuntu 14.04

The apt-get repositories for 14.04 contain golang 1.2.1. Version 1.4.2 is required, so you can download directly (as above). Alternatively, you can add the ethereum apt repository, which hosts golang 1.4.2. Then you can use sudo apt-get install golang to install. You will still have to set the $GOPATH and $PATH variables as specified below.

If you are getting 'error 2' when building Geth or 'expected target' errors, it's because you compiled geth while using Go 1.3.x. Run 'make clean' in the go-ethereum folder then run 'make geth' again to solve the issue.

Other distros

Download the latest distribution:

curl -O https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go1.4.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Unpack it to the /usr/local (might require sudo)

tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.4.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Set GOPATH and PATH

For Go to work properly, you need to set the following two environment variables:

# setup a go folder
mkdir -p ~/go; echo "export GOPATH=$HOME/go" >> ~/.bashrc
# update your path
echo "export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/go/bin:/usr/local/go/bin" >> ~/.bashrc
# read the environment variables into current session
source ~/.bashrc