setup-go

This action sets up a Go environment for use in GitHub Actions by:

• Optionally downloading and caching a version of Go by version and adding it to the PATH
• Optionally caching Go modules and build outputs
• Registering problem matchers for error output

Breaking changes in V6

The V6 edition of the action includes:

• Upgraded Node.js runtime from node20 to node24

  Make sure your runner is on version v2.327.1 or later to ensure compatibility with this release. See Release Notes

• Go toolchain

  • Supports both
    go
    and
    toolchain
    directives in
    go.mod
    . If the
    toolchain
    directive is present, its version is used; otherwise, the action falls back to the
    go
    directive.

• Cache key update

  • By default, the cache key for Go modules is based on
    go.mod
    . To use
    go.sum
    , configure the
    cache-dependency-path
    input.

See full release notes on the releases page.

Usage

See action.yml.

Basic:

Version resolution behavior:

The action resolves the requested version in the following order:

1. Local cache - Checks the local tool cache for a matching semver version.
2. go-versions repository - If the requested version isn’t available in the tool cache, it pulls the version manifest from the
   main
   branch of the go-versions repository.
3. Direct download - If that lookup misses or fails, it will fall back to downloading directly from the official Go distribution site.

To change the default behavior, please use the check-latest input.

Note: The

setup-go

action uses executable binaries built by the Go team and does not build Go binaries from source code.

Supported version syntax

The

input supports the following syntax:

• Specific versions:
  1.25
  ,
  1.24.11
  ,
  1.24.0-rc.1
  ,
  1.23.0-beta.1
• SemVer version range syntax:
  ^1.25.1
  ,
  ~1.24.1
  ,
  >=1.25.0-rc.1
  ,
  <1.25.0
  ,
  >=1.22.0 <1.24.0
• Aliases:
  stable
  ,
  oldstable
• Wildcards:
  1.25.x
  ,
  1.x

For details on Semantic Versioning, see the semver package documentation.

Note: Due to the peculiarities of YAML parsing, it is recommended to wrap the version in single quotation marks:

The recommendation is based on the YAML parser's behavior, which interprets non-wrapped values as numbers and, in the case of version

1.20

, trims it down to

1.2

, which may not be very obvious.

For more usage examples, please refer to the section: Using go-version input of the Advanced usage guide.

Recommended permissions

When using the

action in your GitHub Actions workflow, it is recommended to set the following permissions to ensure proper functionality:

Caching dependency files and build outputs

The action includes built-in caching and restoration for Go modules and build outputs. It uses toolkit/cache under the hood, but requires less configuration. The

input is optional, and caching is enabled by default. To disable caching, set

cache: false

.

By default, the action looks for

in the repository root and uses its hash as part of the cache key. Use the

cache-dependency-path

input when you have multiple dependency files, or when they’re located in different subdirectories. This input supports glob patterns.

If caching cannot be performed for any reason, the action logs a warning and continues workflow execution.

For examples of using

, see the Caching section of the Advanced usage guide.

Advanced usage

• Using the go-version input
• Using the go-version-file input
• Check latest version
• Caching
• Outputs
• Custom download URL
• Using
  setup-go
  on GHES

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License.

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! See our Contributor's Guide.

Code of Conduct

👋 Be nice. See our code of conduct