Go install fails with error: no install location for directory xxx outside GOPATH

macos go
tgandrews picture tgandrews · Aug 9, 2013 · Viewed 118.7k times · Source 
~/src/go-statsd-client> echo $GOPATH
/Users/me/gopath
~/src/go-statsd-client> echo $GOROOT
/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.1.1\
~/src/go-statsd-client> go install
go install: no install location for directory /Users/me/src/go-statsd-client outside GOPATH

No matter what structure the project is in this always fails with the same message. Go build works perfectly.

Here is my go env

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOCHAR="6"
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="darwin"
GOOS="darwin"
GOPATH="/Users/me/gopath"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.1.1"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.1.1/pkg/tool/darwin_amd64"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-g -O2 -fPIC -m64 -pthread -fno-common"
CGO_ENABLED="1"

This is on Mac OSX Mountain Lion and go was installed with homebrew.

Answer

Benjamin Wootton picture Benjamin Wootton · Sep 2, 2015

For any OS X users and future me, you also need to set GOBIN to avoid this confusing message on install and go get

mkdir bin 
export GOBIN=$GOPATH/bin

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