The GOPATH environment variable specifies the location of your workspace. If no GOPATH is set, it is assumed to be $HOME/go on Unix systems and %USERPROFILE%\go on Windows. If you want to use a custom location as your workspace, you can set the GOPATH environment variable. This page explains how to set this variable on various platforms.

Unix systems

GOPATH can be any directory on your system. In Unix examples, we will set it to $HOME/work. Note that GOPATH must not be the same path as your Go installation. Another common setup is to set GOPATH=$HOME.

Bash

Edit your ~/.bash_profile to add the following line:

export GOPATH=$HOME/work

Save and exit your editor. Then, source your ~/.bash_profile.

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Note: Set the GOBIN path to generate a binary file when go install is run.

export GOBIN=$HOME/work/bin

Zsh

Edit your ~/.zshrc file to add the following line:

export GOPATH=$HOME/work

Save and exit your editor. Then, source your ~/.zshrc.

$ source ~/.zshrc

Windows

Your workspace can be located wherever you like, but we'll use C:\work in this example. Note that GOPATH must not be the same path as your Go installation.

  • Create folder at C:\work.
  • Right click on “Start” and click on “Control Panel”. Select “System and Security”, then click on “System”.
  • From the menu on the left, select the “Advanced systems settings”.
  • Click the "Environment Variables button at the bottom.
  • Click “New” from the “User variables” section.
  • Type GOPATH into the “Variable name” field.
  • Type C:\work into the “Variable value” field.
  • Click OK.