Essential commands

Context

The go command is the primary interface to the Go toolchain. Here are the most important subcommands used daily.

Subcommands in detail

go run

Compiles and runs a Go program in one step. The compiled binary is placed in a temporary directory and deleted after execution.

go run main.go

You can pass arguments to the program after a -- separator:

go run main.go -- arg1 arg2

go build

Compiles the current package and its dependencies. For a main package, it produces an executable binary. For a non‑main package, it compiles and discards the result (useful for checking errors).

# Build executable (name = directory name)
go build

# Build with custom output name
go build -o myapp

# Build for a different operating system
GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build

go test

Runs tests defined in *_test.go files. It discovers functions named TestXxx(t *testing.T) and runs them.

# Run all tests in current directory
go test

# Verbose output
go test -v

# Run specific test function
go test -run=TestAdd

# Run tests with coverage
go test -cover

# Run benchmarks
go test -bench=.

go fmt

Formats Go source files according to the official style (no tabs, consistent indentation). This command rewrites files in place. It is safe to run on any Go code.

# Format current directory
go fmt

# Format all packages in the module
go fmt ./...

go vet

Reports suspicious constructs that are likely bugs, such as unreachable code, incorrect format strings, or race conditions (when run with -race). It does not produce false positives in most cases.

go vet
go vet ./...

go mod tidy

Cleans up the go.mod and go.sum files by adding missing requirements and removing unused ones. Always run this before committing changes to a module.

go mod tidy

Example

Compile and run a simple program.

Code example

go run main.go

Output

Hello, Go!

Useful links

• Go command documentation
• How to write Go code