IDE Integration

IDEs need to have certain environment variables set before they work with TinyGo: GOROOT and GOFLAGS. You can determine the correct values from the tinygo info command (starting with TinyGo 0.15).

To get the correct values for these flags, run the following command. Here it is for microbit, replace it with something else if you need it.

$ tinygo info microbit
LLVM triple:       armv6m-none-eabi
GOOS:              linux
GOARCH:            arm
build tags:        cortexm baremetal linux arm nrf51822 nrf51 nrf microbit tinygo gc.conservative scheduler.tasks
garbage collector: conservative
scheduler:         tasks
cached GOROOT:     /home/user/.cache/tinygo/goroot-go1.14-f930d5b5f36579e8cbd1c139012b3d702281417fb6bdf67303c4697195b9ef1f-syscall

• The GOROOT value needed is the cached GOROOT given in the output (/home/user/.cache/tinygo/goroot-go1.14-f930d5b5f36579e8cbd1c139012b3d702281417fb6bdf67303c4697195b9ef1f-syscall in the example).

• The GOFLAGS value can be determined from the build tags. Take the entire list of build tags, replace spaces with commas, and add -tags= in front. For this example, the output would be -tags=cortexm,baremetal,linux,arm,nrf51822,nrf51,nrf,microbit,tinygo,gc.conservative,scheduler.tasks.

Now you need to configure your IDE with these values.

Using tinygo-edit

There is a CLI tool called tinygo-edit you can use it to Gather the needed build flags and starting the editor using the correct environment variables. Using the CLI you don’t need to do the steps manualy.

Using an alias

Another alternative to automate the process of fetching the needed environment variables and starting your editor, you could also create an alias.

TinyGo Drivers

There are already lot’s of drivers for common hardware. See this for more information.

Using drivers with Go modules

When you’re using Go modules, drivers are automatically added when you import a driver (such as tinygo.org/x/drivers/ws2812).

Install drivers using GOPATH

When you’re not using Go modules, you need to download the drivers separately. This works like any Go package:

go get -d tinygo.org/x/drivers