GitHub Action
Setup Go Faster
It's like actions/setup-go but faster.
On Ubuntu runners, setup-go-faster typically takes about 4s vs 10s for setup-go. This is difficult to benchmark on MacOS and Windows because the action runners are inconsistent from one run to another.
When using a pre-installed version of go, setup-go-faster will be done less than a second vs 1-2 seconds for setup-go.
The performance improvement is achieved by using simple bash scripts instead of nodejs meaning there is less overhead to deal with. It is also smart about skipping constraint checks when "go-version" isn't a constraint.
The exception to the bash-only rule is setup-go-faster downloads and runs https://github.com/WillAbides/semver-select to evaluate some version constraints. This takes about 700-1000ms and only affects workflows that use semver constraints.
Setup-go-faster will install go tip from source if you set go-version: tip.
No need to wait around for another repo to merge a PR when a new version of go is released. Setup-go-faster gets available versions directly from https://golang.org/dl. As soon as a release is available there, it's available to your workflow.
Look at those outputs. If you want to use GOPATH or GOMODCACHE as input in some other step, you can just grab it from setup-go-faster's output instead of having to add another step just to set an environment variable.
Just the stable input. I don't understand what stable adds for actions/setup-go. If you only want stable builds
you can set go-version accordingly. If there is good use case for stable, it can be added.
Required
The version of go to install. It can be an exact version or a semver constraint like '1.14.x' or '^1.14.4'. Do not add "go" or "v" to the beginning of the version.
Action runners come with some versions of go pre-installed. If any of those versions meet your semver constraint
setup-go-faster will use those instead of checking whether a newer go available for download that meets your
constraint. You can change this with the ignore-local input below.
A special case value for go-version is tip which causes setup-go-faster to install the gotip from source. Be
warned there is nothing fast about this. It takes between 3 and 5 minutes on Ubuntu runners and is even slower
on Windows and MacOS runners.
Go versions aren't really semvers, but they are close enough to use semver constraints for the most part. There are a some gotchas to watch out for:
-
Go doesn't release .0 versions. The first 1.15.x releas is 1.15, not 1.15.0. This means if you have set go-version to 1.15, when 1.15.1 is released it won't be used because 1.15 is an exact match. If you want any go in the 1.15 family, set go-version to
1.15.x -
Go's pre-releases are not valid semver. For example the beta for 1.16 is 1.16beta1. This means pre-releases need to be explicitely specified.
For those who learn best from examples:
| go-version | description |
|---|---|
| 1.15.6 | installs 1.15.6 |
| 1.15beta1 | installs 1.15beta1 |
| 1.15.x | installs the newest go that starts with 1.15 |
| 1.15 | installs go 1.15, nothing newer. You generally do not want this and should use 1.15.x instead. |
| * | installs the newest go without any other constraints |
| ^1.15.4 | installs a go that is >= 1.15.4 and < 2 |
| ~1.15.4 | installs a go that is >= 1.15.4 and < 1.16 |
| < 1.15.6 >= 1.15.4 | installs a go that is >= 1.15.4 and < 1.15.6 |
| tip | installs gotip from source |
Normally a pre-installed version of go that meets the go-version constraints will be used instead of checking whether a newer version is available for download. With ignore-local, the action will always check for a newer version available for download. Set this to any non-empty value to enable.
output of go env GOCACHE
output of go env GOMODCACHE
output of go env GOPATH
output of go env GOROOT
output of go env GOTOOLDIR