How to Install Golang on WSL/WSL2 - Software Engineering Authority

If you need to install Golang on WSL under Windows 10 or higher, you can follow these few steps.

First remove any old versions lying around

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go* && sudo rm -rf /usr/local/go
Code language: Bash (bash)

Determine the latest Go version

Go to https://golang.org/dl/ and find out what the latest version is. At the time of writing this, Go is on version 1.16.

Install Go

Make sure to replace 1.16 below with the updated version as required.

VERSION=1.16
OS=linux
ARCH=amd64

cd $HOME
wget https://storage.googleapis.com/golang/go$VERSION.$OS-$ARCH.tar.gz
tar -xvf go$VERSION.$OS-$ARCH.tar.gz
mv go go-$VERSION
sudo mv go-$VERSION /usr/local
Code language: Bash (bash)

Add Go to your environment profile

Open ~/.bashrc and add the following. Remember to update the 1.16 to the version you installed.

export GOROOT=/usr/local/go-1.16
export GOPATH=$HOME/projects/go
export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/projects/go/bin
Code language: Bash (bash)

You will now be able to run Go by typing go in the WSL terminal.

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lior

1 month ago

actually the wget didnt work – went to golang.org installation for it:https://go.dev/doc/install

this also takes care for the path update, too

Patrick Warburton

4 months ago

Hi, silly question here.
How do I open this ~/.bashrc?
There aren’t many guides on the internet to go on.
I’ve opened it using cat .bashrc, but it’s giving me an interface that i find quite confusing, in that it doesn’t offer an obvious place to input the lines of code you include in the second grey box.

Thanks

Author

Andrew

Reply to Patrick Warburton

You could use vi ~/.bashrc if you are comfortable with Vim, otherwise nano ~/.bashrc will use the Nano editor.

Reply to Andrew

Thanks for your help. I’ve figured the bashrc file out successfully.
However, when I run go version I get 1.13.8.
This is the fourth or so time that I’ve installed go, each time it installs this version.
Do you know why this could be?

Thanks for the help. I’ve sorted it now

J. R.

2 months ago

How did you fix it? Mine is doing the same thing!

Chavez

5 months ago

Awesome post, It helped alot. Thank you.