Install Go on WSL Ubuntu from the command line

With Go 1.18 just out and in GA, I was curious to give Go "a go" (pun intended) and play around a bit with Generics - a highly anticipated feature in Go! but first I had to install it. I chose to go with WSL 2 and use Ubuntu for my new playground but I also wanted to install everything from the command line. Let's go!

Is there a video?

Funny you ask? I've also recorded a 4min video that takes you through the process if you are a visual person. Check it out:

Installation

First we want to remove old versions of Go. Run the following command in WSL Ubuntu:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go* && sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go	

Then we want to download the latest version (currently 1.18). The commands for this are:

wget https://go.dev/dl/go1.18.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xvf go1.18.linux-amd64.tar.gz
mv go go-1.18
sudo mv go-1.18 /usr/local

Next we need to add Go to our environment profile so that it can get picked up by our command line. Open ~/.bashrc with VS Code or your favorite editor: code ~/.bashrc

Update the settings are per below:

export GOROOT=/usr/local/go-1.18
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$GOROOT/bin:$PATH

Restart your command line/terminal and verify that the latest version has been installed correctly by typing go version

Job done! Happy coding with Go(lang)