Let's `go` in the right direction

My goal is to keep my $HOME as clean as possible!

What I’m saying is to have the minimum folder and files scattered in the $HOME directory. Today, I have …

> ls -l | wc -l
58

It is not a good number … for me. There is no correct number; find what works with you!

Today, I’m going to get rid of the go folder! I was even admired to find it is not hidden.

1. Why this folder came to here?

According to its documentation:

The go command and the tools it invokes consult environment variables for configuration. If an environment variable is unset or empty, the go command uses a sensible default setting.

Let’s see what are the “sensible default” settings:

> go env
GOCACHE="/home/.../.cache/go-build"
GOENV="/home/.../.config/go/env"
GOMODCACHE="/home/.../go/pkg/mod"
GOPATH="/home/.../go"
GOROOT="/usr/lib/golang"
GOTMPDIR=""
GOVERSION="go1.20.11"

Some this information we can get from other commands, like:

> go version
go version go1.20.11 linux/amd64

> go env GOENV
/home/.../.config/go/env

2. How can we change the defaults?

The documentation and the output above shows we have a configuration file in .config/go folder. Let’s investigate it!

There is no env file nor go folder in .config …

Well, we can change some specific environment variable with this command:

go env -w <NAME>=<VALUE>

But be aware of this catch, as documentation states:

The location of the configuration file can be changed by setting the environment variable GOENV, and ‘go env GOENV’ prints the effective location, but ‘go env -w’ cannot change the default location. See ‘go help env’ for details.

Let’s try this instead: go env -w GOPRIVATE="test"
Now, see again if there is a file. If there is, congratulations!
Also, the file is written in INI schema.

3. Now, what we change?

The following steps, you can do with the dotbot program. Learn more about it in a next post.

Now open the env file with your preferred editor (mine is nano :P). Copy and paste this code, adjusting the paths:

GOENV="/home/.../.config/go/env"
GOMODCACHE="/home/.../.config/go/pkg/mod"
GOPATH="/home/.../.config/go"
GOTMPDIR="/home/.../.config/go/tmp/"
GOWORK="auto"

Adjust other variables according your needs. See them here.

Now we have another configuration folder in the correct place.

See you in the next cleanup!