Robert Lujo's homepage

Recently I invested some time to learn about new and popular language Go. I wanna give a test-drive, and since I have Windows XP and there is no GO official windows Go port, I needed to do some manual work.

This is the procedure:

• download go windows port (mingw) from http://code.google.com/p/gomingw/downloads/detail?name=gowin32_2010-12-22.zip&can=2&q= 
• unzip to some folder. I did this in c:\testing\go,  so I have c:\testing\go\bin\8g.exe
• create batch file set-go.bat and put it in the folder that is in sys path, e.g. c:\windows\system32\set-go.bat:

    @echo off

    set GOROOT=c:\testing\go

    set GOOS=windows

    set GOARCH=386

    SET PATH=%GOROOT%\bin;%PATH%

    echo Set GOROOT=%GOROOT%

Start GO env. shell:

• start DOS prompt, e.g. start/run/cmd
• call set-go

Someone could ask why I didn’t put these vars to global system path (my computer right click, props, env. vars …). The answer is: I don’t do things like this, I like having more control over my shell environment. If you want to set it globally - check this link.

Now environment is ready, and I can write go programs, compile and run them like this:

• create new file hello.go

        package main

        func main() {

            println(“Hello world.”)

            }

• go to the folder in your DOS-GO prompt and compile it - output is in hello.8:

        8g hello.go

• link it - output is in hello.exe

        8l -o hello.exe hello.8

• run it:

        > hello.exe

        Hello world.

Additional notes:

• Go dev team is developing official windows port - so stay tuned
• On http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1717652/can-go-compiler-be-installed-on-windows you can find other useful information and similar tutorial.

Good luck Go-ing!