Go

Go projects can be run in Devbox by adding the Go SDK to your project. If your project uses cgo or compiles against C libraries, you should also include them in your packages to ensure Go can compile successfully

Example Repo

Adding Go to your Project

devbox add go, or add the following to your devbox.json

  "packages": [
    "go@latest"
  ]

This will install the latest version of the Go SDK. You can find other installable versions of Go by running devbox search go. You can also view the available versions on Nixhub

If you need additional C libraries, you can add them along with gcc to your package list. For example, if libcap is required for yoru project:

"packages": [
    "go",
    "gcc",
    "libcap"
]

Installing go packages that have CLIs

Installing go packages in your devbox shell is as simple as go get <package_name> but some packages come with a CLI of their own (e.g., godotenv). That means after installing the package you should be able to use the CLI binary and also control where that binary is installed. This is done by setting $GOPATH or $GOBIN env variable.

With Devbox you can set these variables in the "env" section of your devbox.json file. In the example below we are setting $GOPATH to be the same directory of our project and therefore godotenv binary will be located in the bin/ subdirectory of $GOPATH:

{
  "packages": [
    "go@latest"
  ],
  "env": {
    "GOPATH": "$PWD",
    "PATH": "$PATH:$PWD/bin"
  },
  "shell": {
    "init_hook": [
      "echo 'Welcome to devbox!' > /dev/null"
    ],
    "scripts": {}
  }
}

Running go install github.com/joho/godotenv/cmd/godotenv@latest will create a bin/ subdirectory in my project and puts godotenv there. Since I also added that subdirectory to my $PATH, my devbox shell can now recognize the godotenv binary and I can run commands like godotenv -h to use godotenv in CLI mode.