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ADM Blog
30Mar/120

Setting up a IDE to play with GO on Windows


This week Google launched Go, an open source programming language that seems really promising. I've been messing around with the weekly builds but now the Windows build is production ready so here we go.

After downloading and installing the package, the next obvious step was to look for a IDE. There are few choices out there but after trying almost all of them nothing really worked as I've expected. The only one that raised to my expectation was Sublime Text 2 + some 3th party plugins to really have it going.

Ok. So now let's make it happen.

1. Install Go

First thing first. If you didn't already installed it, this is the first step.
Go to http://code.google.com/p/go/downloads/list?q=OpSys-Windows+Type%3DInstaller and download the appropriate package for your machine.

2. Install Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text is a commercial product but it can be used for evaluation purposes. So go and download it from http://www.sublimetext.com/2. Again, choose 32 or 64 bit version.

The last build available on their website already has syntax highlighting for .go files so ... yey

3. Install 3th party libraries and plugins for Sublime Text

This is a lengthy one but without this you just have a new text editor on your computer that can do syntax highlighting to .go files. If that is enough for you then stop here. If not let's get busy.

First you need Sublime Package Control. To install it, open up Sublime Text, press ctrl+` to bring up the console and paste the following:

import urllib2,os; pf='Package Control.sublime-package'; ipp=sublime.installed_packages_path(); os.makedirs(ipp) if not os.path.exists(ipp) else None; urllib2.install_opener(urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.ProxyHandler())); open(os.path.join(ipp,pf),'wb').write(urllib2.urlopen('http://sublime.wbond.net/'+pf.replace(' ','%20')).read()); print 'Please restart Sublime Text to finish installation'

 
Restart Sublime Text. Now you need to bring up the command palette with ctrl+shift+p and start typing Package Control: Install Package then press return or click on that option to activate it. You will be presented with a new Quick Panel with the list of available packages. Type GoSublime and press return or on its entry to install GoSublime.

Now you have code completion and other IDE-like features provided by GoSublime. There is one more really helpful plugin you should install.

If you have Git installed then open up a cmd, and type

cd %APPDATA%\Sublime Text 2\Packages\
git clone git://github.com/mkrautz/goimport.git GoImport

If you don't have Git then you must download GoImport and extract the zip file in a new folder at %APPDATA%\Sublime Text 2\Packages\GoImport

Now in Sublime Text, go in the menu at Preferences -> Key Bindings - User and between the [] add the following bindings, so your file will look something like this:

[
   { "keys": ["f1"], "command": "prompt_go_import" },
   { "keys": ["f2"], "command": "prompt_go_drop" }
]

This will bind the F1 and F2 keys to popup the go import dialog which will allow you to add from anywhere you are in your file libraries to the top import block.

4. Adding new run/build system

Using Package Control (just like you installed GoSublime) look for and install Go Build. For alternative install informations and other usage and descriptions then go to git.

This will bind F5 key to execute your code and F7 to build your executable and Ctrl-F5 to run your tests.

All done. Now for the final step...

5. Learn GO

- How to write GO code (need to know)
- Tour of GO (kick ass tutorial)
- Effective GO (tips on writing clear, idiomatic Go code)
- Let's learn GO (book)
- Golang nuts mailing list (awesome support)
- Google Search ( :P )

Hope this helps, I don't know myself much more than this yet. If you find something cool please share it with me too. Cheers and happy coding.

22Jul/110

Pixel Programming

If you're old enough you may have seen the times when programmers wrote code as optimal as possible given the computers available back then. I remember 3D shooter games that would average 300 - 400 KB in size and you would play countless levels for days. Here's for example a 96 KB 3D shooter game called .kkriger that will leave you breathless.

If you try now to explain people these days that it takes less space to write a 3 minutes HD animated video and music clip than than it takes to store a 32×32 pixel icon they won't believe you. Not now when a plain jpeg image used on some website is > 50KB. So here's a guy called Iñigo Quílez who demonstrates just that using the image analogy. He writes a x86 real mode demo using Photoshop. The entire program is done by creating a 9x9 pixels image, filling each pixels with carefully chosen colors to represent the correct opcodes (who needs compilers, right ?) The image is then saved in a .raw format (no headers) then renames it to a .com file so that Windows recognize it as a executable. The animation is a infinite moving tunnel with a gray colored texture created with an XOR pattern, blurred, and deformed using a plane deformation technique to produce the animation.

This is the "source code" resized 10 times in a png extension

And here's the guy in action proving his mad skills.