How to install a golang package during vagrant provision?

Question

There are similar questions about how to install golang with vagrant provision or how to set $GOPATH environment variable, such that it will be available on boot.

However, this question is about how you can set $GOPATH , etc, such that the variable is available during later steps of the provisioning script (and everything else important about golang is in-place for that matter). I'm using an ubuntu image.

Specifically, I want to run these steps in my_provision.sh :

go get github.com/saymedia/terraform-s3-dir
go install github.com/saymedia/terraform-s3-dir

such that when I run the following command after vagrant ssh , it will just work:

terraform-s3-dir

When the go get/install commands run in my_provision.sh , it outputs one of two things: silence, or complaints that the GOPATH var is not set. Either way, when I boot in, terraform-s3-dir is not a recognised command.

I've tried setting the GOPATH , GOROOT and PATH variables in several different ways:

Setting them in my_provision.sh directly (with and without export ), echoing export commands into .bashrc. echoing exporting commands to /etc/profile.d/gopath.sh. These all results in "$GOPATH not set".

running exports in an inline provisioning script, prior to my_provision.sh . This resulted in silent failure, unless I try to run the go get/install commands with sudo, in which case it has the $GOPATH error, too.

If I echo the GOPATH variable in my_provision.sh immediately before the go get/install commands, the variables show that they are set as expected.

If I run the go get/install commands manually from the shell after vagrant ssh , then it installs successfully.

What is different about the vagrant ssh context, vs the provisioning script context, where the go get/install commands get the desired result in the former, but not the latter?

Answer 1

The problem I was having is that in the context of the provisioning script, $HOME refers to the /root/ folder, rather than /home/ubuntu/

It pays to NOT rely on the $HOME variable when setting environment variables during provisioning, if you want to use those variables later in the provisioning scripts.

Here is my solution (from VagrantFile )

config.vm.provision "shell", inline: <<-SHELL
    echo -n                                          >  /etc/profile.d/gopath.sh
    echo 'export GOROOT=/usr/lib/go'                 >> /etc/profile.d/gopath.sh
    echo 'export GOPATH=/home/ubuntu/go'             >> /etc/profile.d/gopath.sh
    echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin' >> /etc/profile.d/gopath.sh
SHELL
devbox.vm.provision "shell", path: "scripts/my_provision.sh"

After this, this GOPATH is picked up correctly by go get and go install