Canonical’s build of Go for Ubuntu
Long-term support, automated installation, and streamlined packaging for Go apps on Ubuntu
Bring stability to your Go environment by innovating on Ubuntu. Receive security patches on day 1, with up to 15 years of long-term support for Go releases through Ubuntu Pro. Benefit from hassle-free installation through the Go snap, streamline your development environment creation with the devpack for Go, and keep your workloads secure with our minimal runtime containers.
Predictable Go release cadence
Go releases on Ubuntu follow an established, reliable cadence that offers you both the latest versions and long-term support for LTS releases. There are multiple methods for installing the Go toolchain on Ubuntu.
Each method offers distinct advantages for various organizations; therefore, choose the one that best aligns with your requirements from the options below.
Archive packages
Ubuntu LTS releases contain the recent Go versions in the archive at the time of the Ubuntu release. This package benefits from the security and support guarantees of Ubuntu Pro.
Snap for Go
The Go snap streamlines the setup experience and it facilitates the side-by-side installation of multiple Go versions, utilizing the identical source-built binaries available from the Ubuntu archive.
Precompiled Go binaries
Precompiled Go binaries, ready for immediate use, can be downloaded in a standard compressed archive format. These official distributions are hosted on the dedicated release page of the official Go programming language website.
Build production grade containers for your Go applications
Thanks to the Go extension for Rockcraft, in just one command you can build Rocks, which are production-grade OCI containers for your application.
Create a Kubernetes operator
for your Go applications
Using the Charmcraft Go plugin, you can package your Go application as a charm in a single command. Charms are universal software operators for lifecycle management, and through the Go plugin, you can unlock the benefits of the entire charm ecosystem.
This enables connections to services like HA Postgres databases, monitoring through Grafana, and easy integration with ingress, among other features.
Full application lifecycle management
Charms operate across all aspects of application lifecycle management, with an emphasis on day 2 operations.
Support for all Kubernetes distributions
Your app can be deployed and orchestrated on all major on prem and cloud Kubernetes distributions.
Benefit from Canonical’s charm ecosystem
Every charm benefits from a set of prebuilt integrations including databases, observability, ingress, authentication and much more.
Streamlined application packaging for VMs
Canonical provides tooling to simplify and automate packaging of Go applications so that they can run on your VM or bare metal machine.
Simplify packaging for VM environments
The new Snapcraft plugin greatly simplifies packaging of Go applications as Snaps. It builds Go modules, which are collections of packages stored in a file tree containing a go.mod file at the root, and allows for setting up a go workspace for Go modules.
Snaps bundle an application with all its dependencies, allowing it to run securely in a sandbox on any major Linux distribution. This simplifies software management with automatic updates and robust security guarantees.
Ample architecture and FIPS support
Supported architectures
Canonical Go builds are available and tested on the following architectures:
- AMD64
- ARM64
- s390x
- Ppc64el
FIPS compliance
With Ubuntu Pro, you can get access to FIPS certified versions of the Go toolchain for Ubuntu packaged as snaps, starting from version 1.18.
Receive up to 15 years of security patching and maintenance
Extend the security support period for your preferred Go build to up to 15 years, through Ubuntu Pro – Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for open source security.
Using Go on Ubuntu gives developers the freedom to focus on making impactful applications that deliver for customers with expanded security maintenance for the latest Go releases.