How to Configure Ubuntu 18.04 Server as Development Environment for Go

Some might say that Ubuntu Server is not the ideal version for development and testing. But I like to keep a VM on AWS just for playing around with Go, and it is nice to have a good text editor with support forsyntax highlighting.

With fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04, run the following to retrieve the snaps of NVIM and Go:

$ sudo snap install --beta nvim --classic
$ sudo snap install go --classic

I am using snap because it retrieves the latest (or close) versions of the packages. Remember, this is an testing environment, not a production server. After installation, let's head to Vim Bootstrap and create a configuration file for NVIM. Choose Go and whatever other languages you might find interesting, then at the final option be sure to pick neovim. Save the file as $HOME/.confg/nvim/init.vim. All you have to do now is start nvim and wait for it to download all the plugins.

After this first batch of packages, you should configure at least one directory in your GOPATH. Let's use $HOME/go:

$ mkdir $HOME/go
$ export GOPATH=$HOME/go

Now open nvim, go to command prompt (type :) and then insert GoInstallBinaries. Besides syntax highlighting, you also get commands like GoBuild and GoTest. Code completion is also available, but it is a little bit tricky, here are the steps Code Completion in neo vim with Go