Setting up the project and running the development server

This is a building series book. It assumes you already know the basics of Go. If not, no worries. You can get a jump-start and learn the basics quickly from Go's official site at https://golang.org/. Writing a simple standalone program with Go is straightforward. But for big projects, we have to set up a clean project layout. For that reason, as a Go developer, you should know how Go projects are laid out and the best practices to keep your code clean.

Make sure you have done the following things before proceeding:

• Install the Go compiler on your machine
• Set the GOROOT and GOPATH environment variables

There are many online references from which you can get to know the preceding details. Depending on your machine type (Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X ), set up a working Go compiler. We will see more details about GOPATH in the following section.