ActiveState ActiveGo 1.8
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Installing ActiveGo on Windows

Before you begin

Prerequisites

Ensure that your system meets the minimum requirements before you start the installation. The ActiveGo 1.8.3 release has the following requirements:

  • Windows 64-bit (amd64); Windows 7, or later
  • The installation requires at least 1 GB of hard drive space

Existing Go installations

The ActiveGo installer will automatically detect if another release of Go is installed by looking for existing GOROOT and GOPATH environment variables. If either variable is found, the installer will warn you about the existing installation and ask you if you want to continue.

If you installed the beta version of ActiveGo 1.8.0, you must uninstall it before you install the 1.8.3 release.

We recommend that you uninstall any other existing Go distributions before installing ActiveGo. If this is not possible, ensure that you take the following precautions when completing a side-by-side installation:

  • Choose a directory name for ActiveGo that will not conflict with your existing installation.
  • Ensure that the installer will not overwrite any of your existing Go directories.
  • Remove the PATH and environment variables associated with any existing Go installations.

After the ActiveGo Setup Wizard is complete, you must make the following configuration changes:

  1. Set GOROOT to point to the location where ActiveGo is installed, and rename your existing GOROOT environment variable to OLD_GOROOT
  2. Set the GOPATH relative to our GOROOT, and rename your existing GOPATH to OLD_GOPATH>
  3. Add the ActiveGo go/bin directory to the start of your PATH environment variable to ensure that the ActiveGo executable is used on the command line.

Accessing remote source control repositories

If you need to access projects located in remote repositories, such as git, using the go get command, you need to install the appropriate command line tools for the repository. You can find the appropriate tools for Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Bazaar here: https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GoGetTools

A "missing" error message indicates that required tools are not installed. For example: go: missing Subversion command indicates that the Subversion command line tools are missing.

Using the ActiveGo Setup Wizard

There are two ways to install ActiveGo with the Setup Wizard:

  1. You can run the Setup Wizard and enter the required information to install the software.
  2. If you want to automate the installation, you can run the Setup Wizard from the command line.

Running the ActiveGo Setup Wizard

When you install ActiveGo, you should run the Setup Wizard as an Administrator.

Running the installation as an Administrator allows other users on the computer to use ActiveGo, and ensures that all of ActiveGo’s features function correctly.

  1. Download the ActiveGo Setup Wizard (ActiveGo-<version>.exe).
  2. Right-click the .exe file and select Run As Administrator.
  3. Follow the prompts on screen to complete the installation.

After installing and configuring ActiveGo, read the Getting Started pages in this guide for a general introduction to ActiveGo on your platform and pointers to documentation that will be most useful to you.

Running the ActiveGo Setup Wizard on the command line

You can install ActiveGo from the command line. You should start the command prompt as an Administrator to ensure the the installation can complete successfully. ActiveGo’s installer uses Windows Installer technology, which allows you to partially control the install from the command line.

Starting the Setup Wizard

You can start the Setup Wizard from the command line, and walk through the installation steps in the user interface.

c:\> ActiveGo-<version>.exe

Logging the Setup Wizard output

If you want to enable logging you can add the appropriate command line switches to specify the level of logging and the log file location. The following command will generate a log of the install in “install.log” in the current directory.

c:\> ActiveGo-<version>.exe /L*v ./install.log

Specifying a custom installation directory

You can also specify a custom installation directory instead of using the default.

c:\> ActiveGo-<version>.exe APPDIR=C:\apps\Go

You can combine command line options to complete your custom installation from the command line. 

c:\> ActiveGo-<version>.exe /qn+ APPDIR=C:\apps\Go /L*v ./install.log

Uninstalling ActiveGo

ActiveGo can be uninstalled using the Uninstall ActiveGo shortcut in the ActiveGo program group in the Windows Start menu, or Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.

Alternatively, you use the Setup Wizard (.exe) file to uninstall ActiveGo on the command line and optionally write the progress to a log file:


c:\> ActiveGo-<version>.exe /x // /L*v ./uninstall.log

If you had GOPATH and GOROOT environment varibles previously set, and renamed them when you installed ActiveGO, they are available as OLD_GOPATH and OLD_GOROOT and can be restored by renaming them back to GOPATH and GOROOT.