Go lang - how to install packages

Set GOPATH environment variable

Set the GOPATH variable which go compiler uses to search for packages along with GOROOT environment variable, which is generally the installation of go

$ echo $GOROOT
/usr/local/go/

$ echo $GOPATH
/development/go/youtube

Install Mercurial client

Download and install the mercurial client in your machine and set the environment variables for PATH.

If you are running Mac, you can use homebrew to install mercurial in seconds.

$ brew install hg

Run the go get command

Lets install a package

$ go get "code.google.com/p/google-api-go-client/youtube/v3"

This will create two packages

  • src - contains the source files of the dependencies
  • pkg - contains the compiled binary of the dependencies
$ tree -d
.
├── pkg
│   └── darwin_amd64
│       └── code.google.com
│           └── p
│               └── google-api-go-client
│                   └── googleapi
└── src
    └── code.google.com
        └── p
            └── google-api-go-client
                ├── adexchangebuyer
                │   ├── v1
                │   ├── v1.1
                │   ├── v1.2
                │   └── v1.3
                │   ...
                │   ...
                ├── youtube
                │   ├── v3
                │   └── v3alpha
                └── youtubeanalytics
                    ├── v1
                    └── v1beta1

Now the dependencies are installed in the folder and you can continue to build the program by go build