2017-12-31

How to build Go development environment with a debugger

The biggest obstacle in learning a new programming language is to build a development environment. Golang is famous for its simple and beginner-friendly syntax, but it does not imply that you are free from the obstacle.

And debugger is always one of the best partners in development and you must need it soon. IntellJ, which has a pretty reputation in Java, Kotlin and other languages has been one best option for a while as an IDE for golang. But a recent update in IntellJ discontinues the compatibility with Go plugin and the support for Go development is now only provided with a non-free plugin Gogland. Considering its functions, it is actually worthy, but it must be too much if you only want to try golang first.

So I would introduce how to build golang development environment with golang itself, its debugger and a GUI interface with Atom editor, only with free options. Here is all you will install in this article:

The latest version of Go (1.9.x)
delve, a go debugger
go-debug, an Atom package

For easy installation, we will use package managers. Make sure that you can use homebrew (for Mac) or apt-get for Linux and apm for Atom package installation.

Install golang on Mac

It is very easy to install golang itself with homebrew. The familiar command

brew install go

should work and you can confirm it with

go version

The debugger delve is also available with homebrew, but it is not as simple as downloading golang. Anyway try

brew install go-delve/delve/delve

On Mac, this command might be blocked right after caching zipped delve due to a security issue. In such a case, you can use a shell script to generate a certification. You first expand the delve with

cd ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew
unzip delve-1.0.0-rc.2.tar.gz

if the downloaded version is delve-1.0.0-rc.2.tar.gz. If you are not really sure about the name of the downloaded file, you can get it like ls | grep delve or something.

You will find a shell script file to solve the security issue by generating a proper certification.

sh ~/Library/Caches/Homebrew/delve-1.0.0-rc.2/scripts/gencert.sh

Then you can execute again

brew install go-delve/delve/delve

and it must work.

Note that those commands above are only valid when you have not changed the caching directory for homebrew. If you have changed it from the default setting, the parameters for the directory must be modified as you set.

The installation can be confirmed with

dlv version

If you have successfully installed it, the output of this command will be like

Delve Debugger
Version: 1.0.0-rc.2
Build: v1.0.0-rc.2

To enjoy golang and delve on Atom editor, you can install go-debug manually on Atom or with a command

apm install go-debug

The first time you open Atom after this installation, Atom will ask whether it should install dependencies as well or not. Answering 'yes', Atom will automatically install dependencies. These efforts to install Atom-related plugins and dependencies have no difference from efforts on Linux.

Install golang on Linux

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gophers/archive
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install golang-1.9-go

If you only use a familiar command like sudo apt-get install golang, it will install an old version of golang (1.5.x). There are not big differences in its syntax and you will not suffer very much from the version difference, while you code without the debugger. However the go debugger delve is incompatible with the old version.

If you are not sure which version of golang you have installed, you can confirm with

go version

Once you confirmed the installation, you can employ go get to install delve. While on Mac you are supposed to solve some blocks due to security issues, on Linux it is pretty easy to install delve. Just type or copy

go get github.com/derekparker/delve/cmd/dlv

and execute it. Done.

Also, you can confirm its installation with:

dlv version

To enjoy golang and delve on Atom editor, you can install go-debug manually on Atom or with a command

apm install go-debug