## Introduction

Go is an open source project with a BSD-style license. There are two official Go compiler toolchains: the `gc` Go compiler and the `gccgo` compiler that is part of the GNU C Compiler (GCC).

The `gc` compiler is the more mature and well-tested of the two. This page is about installing a binary distribution of the `gc` compiler.

For information about installing the `gc` compiler from source, see Installing Go from source. For information about installing `gccgo`, see Setting up and using gccgo.

## Obtaining the Go tools

Visit the Go project's downloads page and select the binary distribution that matches your operating system and processor architecture.

Official binary distributions are available for the FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems and the 32-bit (`386`) and 64-bit (`amd64`) x86 processor architectures.

If a binary distribution is not available for your OS/arch combination you may want to try installing from source or installing gccgo instead of gc.

## Installing the Go tools

The Go binary distributions assume they will be installed in `/usr/local/go`, but it is possible to install them in a different location. If you do this, you will need to set the `GOROOT` environment variable to that directory when using the Go tools.

For example, if you installed Go to your home directory you should add the following commands to `$HOME/.profile`:

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

### FreeBSD and Linux

Extract the archive into `/usr/local`, creating a Go tree in `/usr/local/go` (typically this must be run as root or through `sudo`):

    tar -C /usr/local go.release.go1.tar.gz

Add `/usr/local/go/bin` to the `PATH` environment variable. You can do this by adding this line to your `/etc/profile` (for a system-wide installation) or `$HOME/.profile`:

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

### Mac OS X

Open the `.pkg` file and follow the prompts to install the Go tools. The package installs the Go distribution to `/usr/local/go`.

The package should put the `/usr/local/go/bin` directory in your `PATH` environment variable. You may need to restart any open Terminal sessions for the change to take effect.

### Windows

TODO: windows installation instructions.

## Testing your installation

Check that Go is installed correctly by building a simple program, as follows.

Create a file named `hello.go` and put the following program in it:

    package main

    import "fmt"

    func main() {
        fmt.Printf("hello, world\n")
    }

Then run it with the `go` tool:

    $ go run hello.go
    hello, world

If you see the "hello, world" message then your Go installation is working.

## What's next

Start by taking A Tour of Go or reading the Go Tutorial.

For more detail about the process of building and testing Go programs read How to Write Go Code.

Build a web application by following the Wiki Codelab.

Read Effective Go to learn about writing idiomatic Go code.

For the full story, consult Go's extensive documentation.

## Community resources

For real-time help, there may be users or developers on `#go-nuts` on the Freenode IRC server.

The official mailing list for discussion of the Go language is Go Nuts.

Bugs should be reported using the Go issue tracker.