"unrecognized import path" with go get

I had exactly the same issue, after moving from old go version (installed from old PPA) to newer (1.2.1) default packages in ubuntu 14.04.

The first step was to purge existing go:

sudo apt-get purge golang*

Which outputs following warnings:

dpkg: warning: while removing golang-go, directory '/usr/lib/go/src' not empty so not removed
dpkg: warning: while removing golang-go.tools, directory '/usr/lib/go' not empty so not removed

It looks like removing go leaves some files behind, which in turn can confuse newer install. More precisely, installation itself will complete fine, but afterwards any go command, like "go get something" gives those "unrecognized import path" errors.

All I had to do was to remove those dirs first, reinstall golang, and all works like a charm (assuming you also set GOPATH)

# careful!
sudo rm -rf /usr/lib/go /usr/lib/go/src
sudo apt-get install golang-go golang-go.tools

The issues are relating to an invalid GOROOT.

I think you installed Go in /usr/local/go.
So change your GOROOT path to the value of /usr/local/go/bin.

It seems that you meant to have your workspace (GOPATH) located at /home/me/go.

This might fix your problem.
Add this to the bottom of your bash profile, located here => $HOME/.profile

export GOROOT=/usr/local/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin

Make sure to remove the old references of GOROOT.

Then try installing web.go again.

If that doesn't work, then have Ubuntu install Go for you.

sudo apt-get install golang

Video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PATwIfO5ag


I installed Go with brew on OSX 10.11, and found I had to set GOROOT to:

/usr/local/Cellar/go/1.5.1/libexec

(Of course replace the version in this path with go version you have)

Brew uses symlinks, which were fooling the gotool. So follow the links home.