Install Go using asdf on macOS

install-go-using-asdf-for-vscode-on-macos.md

Install Go using asdf for Visual Studio Code on macOS

I had a lot of issues trying to install Golang on macOS using asdf package manager to develop on Visual Studio Code.

So here's the steps needed to setup it properly:

Open Terminal and install asdf with this command:

You have to install Homebrew before running the installation command.

brew install asdf

Don't forget to setup asdf on your shell by following asdf documentation.

After it finishes, it's time to install Go:

asdf install go 1.20.2

Set the version that we just installed as Global:

asdf global golang 1.20.2

Create links to use the go command without any suffix on Terminal:

asdf reshim golang 1.20.2

Create Go package and source folder

mkdir -p ~/go/{bin,pkg,src}

If you get an error message, remove the folder with this command:

sudo rm -rf ~/go

Re-run the command above to create package and source folders. Note: You have to run it as sudo because Go changes this folder permissions.

Add GOROOT to your shell config file:

Add this line to your shell config file:

ZSH users: file is located at ~/.zshrc Bash users: file is located at ~/.zshrc

export GOROOT=~/.asdf/installs/golang/1.20.2/go

Reload your config file.

If you're using ZSH run this command on Terminal:

source ~/.zshrc

If you're using Bash run this command on Terminal:

source ~/.bashrc

Add these lines to your Visual Studio Code User Settings (bash):

Press Ctrl(Cmd) + Shift + P type User Settings bash and hit ENTER.

On this window paste the code down below and don't forget to Save:

"go.toolsGopath": "~/go/",
"go.gopath": "~/go/",

Install Go extension on Visual Studio Code

Open this URL and hit Install.

Install Go Tools

Press Ctrl(Cmd) + Shift + P type go install tools and hit ENTER. After you get a message like:

All tools successfully installed. You are ready to Go. :)

Reopen Visual Studio Code and everything should be working flawlessly.

Thanks for this @felipemeamaral! ❤️

A small item of feedback if you don't mind: the GOROOT env var can be updated using a script provided by the asdf golang plugin. So instead of specifying the static version of golang for the GOROOT variable like you did, you can match the version of the golang you're running by referencing this script. Check out this part of their readme here. You can verify this using:

echo $GOROOT which should return something like /Users/username/.asdf/installs/golang/1.21.4/go; and
which go which should return /Users/username/.asdf/shims/go

As you have indicated, you do still have to reload your config every time still to make sure the switch happens :)
Update: You shouldn't need to reload your shell after setting this up. Re-shimming after an install/version pin may be required though.

An aside: I personally encountered a weird issue with vscode-go where its tools and binaries where being placed into the root of my projects and it had to do with it not being able to reconcile the version of go used partly because of the GOROOT env var, but also because homebrew installed a version of go to go along with golangci-lint which was interfering with which go install to use. Although golangci-lint recommend you use their pre-made binaries to avoid issues, you can use their docker image as an alternative. This is depicted in this commit for a personal project.

To @therealvio's point about not hardcoding relative paths in shell configs, this is what I've got in mine and it appears to do the thing:

export ASDF_DIR="$HOME/.asdf"
export GOPATH="$ASDF_DIR/shims"
export GOROOT="$(go env GOROOT)"
export GOCACHE=$HOME/go/cache
export GOPROXY="https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
export PATH="$GOPATH/bin:$PATH"

Appreciate the hot tip for settings.json pointed at the ~/go directory. Mine looks like this now:

{
  "go.toolsGopath": "~/go/",
  "go.gopath": "~/go/",
  "go.testTimeout": "180s",
  "go.toolsEnvVars": {
    "GOPROXY": "https://proxy.golang.org,direct"
  }
}