Building and testing Go

You can create a continuous integration (CI) workflow to build and test your Go project.

In this article

Note

GitHub-hosted runners are not currently supported on GitHub Enterprise Server. You can see more information about planned future support on the GitHub public roadmap.

Introduction

This guide shows you how to build, test, and publish a Go package.

GitHub-hosted runners have a tools cache with preinstalled software, which includes the dependencies for Go. For a full list of up-to-date software and the preinstalled versions of Go, see Using GitHub-hosted runners.

Prerequisites

You should already be familiar with YAML syntax and how it's used with GitHub Actions. For more information, see Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions.

We recommend that you have a basic understanding of the Go language. For more information, see Getting started with Go.

Using a Go workflow template

To get started quickly, add a workflow template to the .github/workflows directory of your repository.

GitHub provides a Go workflow template that should work for most Go projects. The subsequent sections of this guide give examples of how you can customize this workflow template.

  1. On GitHub, navigate to the main page of the repository.

  2. Under your repository name, click Actions.

    Screenshot of the tabs for the "github/docs" repository. The "Actions" tab is highlighted with an orange outline.

  3. If you already have a workflow in your repository, click New workflow.

  4. The "Choose a workflow" page shows a selection of recommended workflow templates. Search for "go".

  5. Filter the selection of workflows by clicking Continuous integration.

  6. On the "Go - by GitHub Actions" workflow, click Configure.

    Screenshot of the "Choose a workflow" page. The "Configure" button on the "Go" workflow is highlighted with an orange outline.
    If you don't find the "Go - by GitHub Actions" workflow template, copy the following workflow code to a new file called go.yml in the .github/workflows directory of your repository.

    YAML
    name: Go

on:
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ "main" ]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: self-hosted
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.20'

      - name: Build
        run: go build -v ./...

      - name: Test
        run: go test -v ./...

  7. Edit the workflow as required. For example, change the version of Go.

  8. Click Commit changes.

Specifying a Go version

The easiest way to specify a Go version is by using the setup-go action provided by GitHub. For more information see, the setup-go action.

To use a preinstalled version of Go on a GitHub-hosted runner, pass the relevant version to the go-version property of the setup-go action. This action finds a specific version of Go from the tools cache on each runner, and adds the necessary binaries to PATH. These changes will persist for the remainder of the job.

The setup-go action is the recommended way of using Go with GitHub Actions, because it helps ensure consistent behavior across different runners and different versions of Go. If you are using a self-hosted runner, you must install Go and add it to PATH.

Using multiple versions of Go

YAML
name: Go

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go-version: [ '1.19', '1.20', '1.21.x' ]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Setup Go ${{ matrix.go-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: ${{ matrix.go-version }}
      # You can test your matrix by printing the current Go version
      - name: Display Go version
        run: go version

Using a specific Go version

You can configure your job to use a specific version of Go, such as 1.20.8. Alternatively, you can use semantic version syntax to get the latest minor release. This example uses the latest patch release of Go 1.21:

YAML
      - name: Setup Go 1.21.x
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          # Semantic version range syntax or exact version of Go
          go-version: '1.21.x'

Installing dependencies

You can use go get to install dependencies:

YAML
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Setup Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.21.x'
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: |
          go get .
          go get example.com/octo-examplemodule
          go get example.com/octo-examplemodule@v1.3.4

Caching dependencies

You can cache and restore dependencies using the setup-go action. By default, caching is enabled when using the setup-go action.

The setup-go action searches for the dependency file, go.sum, in the repository root and uses the hash of the dependency file as a part of the cache key.

You can use the cache-dependency-path parameter for cases when multiple dependency files are used, or when they are located in different subdirectories.

YAML
      - name: Setup Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.17'
          cache-dependency-path: subdir/go.sum

If you have a custom requirement or need finer controls for caching, you can use the cache action. For more information, see Caching dependencies to speed up workflows.

Building and testing your code

You can use the same commands that you use locally to build and test your code. This example workflow demonstrates how to use go build and go test in a job:

YAML
name: Go
on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Setup Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: '1.21.x'
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: go get .
      - name: Build
        run: go build -v ./...
      - name: Test with the Go CLI
        run: go test

Packaging workflow data as artifacts

After a workflow completes, you can upload the resulting artifacts for analysis. For example, you may need to save log files, core dumps, test results, or screenshots. The following example demonstrates how you can use the upload-artifact action to upload test results.

For more information, see Storing and sharing data from a workflow.

YAML
name: Upload Go test results

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        go-version: [ '1.19', '1.20', '1.21.x' ]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Setup Go
        uses: actions/setup-go@v5
        with:
          go-version: ${{ matrix.go-version }}
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: go get .
      - name: Test with Go
        run: go test -json > TestResults-${{ matrix.go-version }}.json
      - name: Upload Go test results
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: Go-results-${{ matrix.go-version }}
          path: TestResults-${{ matrix.go-version }}.json