cannot download, $GOPATH not set

Question

[Update: as of Go 1.8, GOPATH defaults to $HOME/go, but you may still find this useful if you want to understand the GOPATH layout, customize it, etc.]

The official Go site discusses GOPATH and how to lay out a workspace directory.

export GOPATH="$HOME/your-workspace-dir/" -- run it in your shell, then add it to ~/.bashrc or equivalent so it will be set for you in the future. Go will install packages under src/, bin/, and pkg/, subdirectories there. You'll want to put your own packages somewhere under $GOPATH/src, like $GOPATH/src/github.com/myusername/ if you want to publish to GitHub. You'll also probably want export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin in your .bashrc so you can run compiled programs under $GOPATH.

Optionally, via Rob Pike, you can also set CDPATH so it's faster to cd to package dirs in bash: export CDPATH=.:$GOPATH/src/github.com:$GOPATH/src/golang.org/x means you can just type cd net/html instead of cd $GOPATH/src/golang.org/x/net/html.

Keith Rarick notes you can set GOPATH=$HOME to put Go's src/, pkg/ and bin/ directories right under your homedir. That can be nice (for instance, you might already have $HOME/bin in your path) but of course some folks use multiple workspaces, etc.

This one worked

Setting up Go development environment on Ubuntu, and how to fix $GOPATH / $GOROOT

Steps

mkdir ~/go

Set $GOPATH in .bashrc,

export GOPATH=~/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

Using brew

I installed it using brew.

$ brew install go

When it was done if you run this brew command it'll show the following info:

$ brew info go
go: stable 1.4.2 (bottled), HEAD
Go programming environment
https://golang.org
/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.4.2 (4676 files, 158M) *
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/go.rb
==> Options
--with-cc-all
    Build with cross-compilers and runtime support for all supported platforms
--with-cc-common
    Build with cross-compilers and runtime support for darwin, linux and windows
--without-cgo
    Build without cgo
--without-godoc
    godoc will not be installed for you
--without-vet
    vet will not be installed for you
--HEAD
    Install HEAD version
==> Caveats
As of go 1.2, a valid GOPATH is required to use the `go get` command:
  https://golang.org/doc/code.html#GOPATH

You may wish to add the GOROOT-based install location to your PATH:
  export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/bin

The important pieces there are these lines:

/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.4.2 (4676 files, 158M) *

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/bin

Setting up GO's environment

That shows where GO was installed. We need to do the following to setup GO's environment:

$ export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/opt/go/libexec/bin
$ export GOPATH=/usr/local/opt/go/bin

You can then check using GO to see if it's configured properly:

$ go env
GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCHAR="6"
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="darwin"
GOOS="darwin"
GOPATH="/usr/local/opt/go/bin"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.4.2/libexec"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.4.2/libexec/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64"
CC="clang"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -fno-common"
CXX="clang++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"

Setting up json2csv

Looks good, so lets install json2csv:

$ go get github.com/jehiah/json2csv
$

What just happened? It installed it. You can check like this:

$ $ ls -l $GOPATH/bin
total 5248
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sammingolelli  staff  2686320 Jun  9 12:28 json2csv

OK, so why can't I type json2csv in my shell? That's because the /bin directory under $GOPATH isn't on your $PATH.

$ type -f json2csv
-bash: type: json2csv: not found

So let's temporarily add it:

$ export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH

And re-check:

$ type -f json2csv
json2csv is hashed (/usr/local/opt/go/bin/bin/json2csv)

Now it's there:

$ json2csv --help
Usage of json2csv:
  -d=",": delimiter used for output values
  -i="": /path/to/input.json (optional; default is stdin)
  -k=[]: fields to output
  -o="": /path/to/output.json (optional; default is stdout)
  -p=false: prints header to output
  -v=false: verbose output (to stderr)
  -version=false: print version string

Add the modifications we've made to $PATH and $GOPATH to your $HOME/.bash_profile to make them persist between reboots.

Watch a Video

In general, I always recommend this official video from Go to get a quick overview on the matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCsL89YtqCs

It's easier to be shown than to be told.

@jwfearn paraphrased the important part of the video:

export GOPATH="${HOME}/gocode"; export PATH="${PATH}:${GOPATH}/bin"; mkdir -p "${GOPATH}"

I found easier to do it like this:

export GOROOT=$HOME/go
export GOPATH=$GOROOT/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH