Creating Your First Go Project

As we have already covered the basics of Golang in our golang tutorial, let’s see how to create your first Go project with simple and easy-to-follow steps.

Open File menu and create new Go Project as shown below :

Enter the name of the project and choose your workspace location.

After creating project your IDE screen will appear like this –

You have to create your folders and .go files in src folder only.

Now right click on src folder→ New→ Folder

Then right click on the main (folder created by you) folder→ New Go File

Here Enter your go file name with .go extension and choose the Command Source file option. First option will create empty main functions and Simple Web Server option creates Simple Web Application.

Create Go file in the src/main folder of your project with extension .go

The folders like github.com , golang.org and other ones will be created as you download the dependencies.

Here you can write your code. For example –

Now for executing this program you need to build the project. So double click on the build option as shown below –

It will build like this and generates main.exe binary file in bin package.

Sometimes while building project, you will face build errors like –

So check the message and identify which package is missing and then go to command prompt and type the >go get <github_url_packageName>

So for above messages, enter below commands →

go get -u github.com/alecthomas/gometalinter

go get -u github.com/stretchr/testify

go get golang.org/x/net/html

go get golang.org/x/text/encoding

go get golang.org/x/text/encoding/charmap

go get golang.org/x/text/encoding/htmlindex

go get golang.org/x/text/transform

go get golang.org/x/crypto/ssh/terminal

Now again try to rebuild it and it will create main.exe file in your bin folder of project file for example – Main.exe

Now for running your project –

Right click on your project→ Select Run As→ Run Configurations

Then select the project and package to build i.e. main

Select your project by clicking on Browse

Now, select the package to build

And then click on Run so that your Go program will execute

We can also execute the go program by going to the main pkg of project and type –

> go run main.go command

Again if you need more programs inside, follow the same procedure

Go Commands –

go build→ builds go code; if code is package main, it creates a binary executable in main folder & if code is just a package then it builds it and throws away the binary

go install→ builds and install go code; if code is package main, it creates binary executable and drops in workspaces’ bin folder; if code is package, it build it and keeps in pkg folder

import→ import path is everything after “src ” folder in your workspace. You can alias packages in your imports

If you want to debug your project then select your project → Right click→ select Debug As Application as shown below