Example Go Install

This package aims to demonstrate how libraries / commands should be organized in a go package.

Notes

1. The name of your repository will be the command that users type into the command line. Since my repository is named example-go-install, when you install it, that's the command you'll call on the command line.

2. If you're testing this out and installing your application multiple times to debug it, make sure you change your $GOPROXY environment variable to be direct, that will avoid any caching of your projects versions.

   export GOPROXY=direct

3. If your main.go file needs to make use of any of the libraries in your package, you should import them with the fully qualified URL to the github repository including the sub-directory for the library. See main.go for an example of this.

Structure

mylib
  mylib.go
main.go

main.go

The main.go file should have it's package set to package main and it should have a main() function. This is what will be called when your program is executed.

main.go

package main

import (
    // Import the library we need
    "github.com/nathan-fiscaletti/example-go-install/mylib"
)

func main() {
    mylib.PrintName("nathan")
}

mylib

All files in the mylib directory should have their package set appropriately, do not set it to main.

mylib/mylib.go

package mylib

import (
    "fmt"
)

func PrintName(name string) {
    fmt.Printf(name)
}

Installing your package

You should tell users to install your binary using go install.

When they run go install, it will automatically compile your main package for that platform and place it in the $GOPATH/bin directory.

$ go install github.com/nathan-fiscaletti/example-go-install@latest

Provided the user installing the program has $GOPATH/bin in their $PATH environment variable, they can now call example-go-install from anywhere.

Library Consumption

You can allow developers to consum the libraries that are included in your package by giving them the proper paths for go get.

For example, if a developer wanted to consume the mylib library from this package, they would do that with:

$ go get github.com/nathan-fiscaletti/example-go-install/mylib

import (
    "github.com/nathan-fiscaletti/example-go-install/mylib"
)