How to Install Golinks on Elementary OS

Golinks is a command-line tool that lets you create and manage your own custom URL shorteners, similar to services like Bitly and TinyURL. In this tutorial, we'll go through the steps to install Golinks on the latest version of Elementary OS.

Prerequisites

  • Access to a terminal
  • A working internet connection

Step 1: Install Go

Golinks is written in Go, so you'll need to have Go installed on your system before you can use it. To install Go, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. Update the package list: sudo apt update.
  3. Install the Go language: sudo apt install golang.

Step 2: Clone the Golinks Repository

The next step is to clone the Golinks repository from its source code repository. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you want to store the Golinks source code.
  3. Clone the repository using Git: git clone https://git.mills.io/prologic/golinks.git

Step 3: Build Golinks

Once you have the Golinks repository on your system, you can compile the source code to create the Golinks executable. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you cloned the Golinks repository.
  3. Compile the source code: go build

This will create the Golinks executable in the same directory.

Step 4: Install Golinks

To use Golinks from anywhere on your system, you'll need to add the path to the Golinks executable to your system's PATH variable. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you compiled the Golinks source code.
  3. Move the executable to the /usr/local/bin directory: sudo mv golinks /usr/local/bin/.
  4. Add the /usr/local/bin directory to your system's PATH variable:
echo 'export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc

Step 5: Test Golinks

To test that Golinks is installed correctly, try running a basic command to create a new link. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Open a terminal window.
  2. Type the following command: golinks add google https://www.google.com
  3. Press Enter.

If the command executes successfully, you should see a message indicating that the link has been added:

Added link "google" with URL "https://www.google.com"

You can also check that the link has been added by running the following command:

golinks list

This should display a list of all the links you've added.

Congratulations! You've successfully installed Golinks on your Elementary OS system.