GoTV

GoTV is an abbreviation of Go Toolchain Version. It is a tool used to manage and use multiple coexisting installations of official Go toolchain versions harmoniously and conveniently.

Project page: https://github.com/go101/gotv

Please follow @Go100and1 to get the latest news of GoTV (and all kinds of Go details/facts/tips/...).

Installation

Run

go install go101.org/gotv@latest

to install GoTV.

A 1.17+ toolchain version is needed to finish the installation. The toolchain version may be uninstalled after pinning a suitable toolchain version (see below).

Usage

Run gotv without any arguments to show help messages.

Most gotv commands are in the following format:

gotv ToolchainVersion [go-arguments...]

During running the first such a command, the Go git repository will be cloned (which needs several minutes to finish).

ToolchainVersion might be

• a Go release version, such as 1.17.13, 1.18, 1.19rc1, which mean the release tags go1.17.13, go1.18, go1.19rc1, respectively, in the Go git repository. Note:
  • 1.N. means the latest release of 1.N.
  • 1. means the latest Go 1 release version.
  • . means the latest Go release version.
• :1.N, which means the local latest release-branch.go1.N branch in the Go git repository.
• :tip, which means the local latest master branch in the Go git repository.
• a version suffixed with ! means to fetch remote versions (by running gotv fetch-versions) firstly.

Examples:

$ gotv 1.17. version
[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.17.13/bin/go version
go version go1.17.13 linux/amd64

$ gotv 1.18.3 version
[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.18.3/bin/go version
go version go1.18.3 linux/amd64

$ cat main.go
package main

const A = 3

func main() {
	const (
		A = A + A
		B
	)
	println(A, B)
}

$ gotv 1.17. run main.go
[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.17.13/bin/go run main.go
6 6

$ gotv 1.18.3 run main.go
[Run]: $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.18.3/bin/go run main.go
6 12

Other gotv commands:

# sync the local Go git repository with remote
gotv fetch-versions

# list all versions seen locally
gotv list-versions

# build and cache some toolchain versions
gotv cache-version ToolchainVersion [ToolchainVersion ...]

# uncache some toolchain versions to save disk space
gotv uncache-version ToolchainVersion [ToolchainVersion ...]

# pin a specified toolchain version at a stable path
gotv pin-version ToolchainVersion

# unpin the current pinned toolchain version
gotv unpin-version

Pin a toolchain version

We can use the gotv pin-version command to pin a specific toolchain version to a stable path. After adding the stable path to the PATH environment veriable, we can use the official go command directly. And after doing these, the toolchain versions installed through ways other than GoTV may be safely uninstalled.

It is recommanded to pin a 1.17+ version for bootstrap purpose now. The following example shows how to pin Go toolchain version 1.17.13:

$ gotv pin-version 1.17.
[Run]: cp -r $HOME/.cache/gotv/tag_go1.17.13 $HOME/.cache/gotv/pinned-toolchain

Please put the following shown pinned toolchain path in
your PATH environment variable to use go commands directly:

	/home/username/.cache/gotv/pinned-toolchain/bin

After the prompted path is added to the PATH environment variable, open a new terminal window:

$ go version
go version go1.17.13 linux/amd64

The command gotv pin-version .! will upgrade the pinned toolchain to the latest release version (which may be a beta or rc version).

Set a bootstrap toolchain version

To build a toolchain verision, another already built toolchain version is needed to be used in the building process. The other toolchain version is called the bootstrap version.

Some facts:

• Toolchain versions <= 1.12.17 are unable to be built with toochain versions >= 1.16;
• Toolchain versions <= 1.5.4 are uanable to be built with toolchain versions >= 1.6;
• It is planned to require a 1.17.13+ toolchain version to build 1.20+ toolchain versions;
• It is proposed to require a 1.20+ toolchain verison to build 1.22+ toolchain verisons.

Currently, GoTV uses the toolchain set in the PATH environment variable as the bootstrap version by default. If GOROOT_BOOTSTRAP environment variable is set, then its value will be used.