# gimme

**Repository Path**: huang_a/gimme

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: gimme
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: MIT
- **Default Branch**: master
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2025-05-15
- **Last Updated**: 2025-05-15

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

# gimme [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.com/travis-ci/gimme.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.com/travis-ci/gimme)

Install go, yay!

`gimme` is a shell script that knows how to install [go](https://golang.org).  Fancy! :tada:

## Installation & usage

Install from github:

``` bash
# assumes ~/bin exists and is in $PATH, so adjust accordingly!

curl -sL -o ~/bin/gimme https://raw.githubusercontent.com/travis-ci/gimme/master/gimme
chmod +x ~/bin/gimme
```

[Homebrew](http://brew.sh) (OS X):

```bash
brew install gimme
```

[Arch AUR](https://aur.archlinux.org/) (Arch Linux), substituting `yaourt` with
however you prefer to install from AUR:

``` bash
# latest released version
yaourt -S gimme

# current git HEAD revision
yaourt -S gimme-git
```

Then check the help text a la:

``` bash
gimme -h

# or

gimme --help

# or

gimme help

# or

gimme wat
```

To install and use version 1.4, for example:
``` bash
eval "$(GIMME_GO_VERSION=1.4 gimme)"

# or:

eval "$(gimme 1.4)"

# or if you can't stand the thought of using `eval`:

gimme 1.4
source ~/.gimme/envs/go1.4.env
```

Or run without installing gimme:

``` bash
eval "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/travis-ci/gimme/master/gimme | GIMME_GO_VERSION=1.4 bash)"
```

To install and use the current stable release of Go:

``` bash
gimme stable
```

To install the previous minor release of Go:

``` bash
gimme oldstable
```

Or to install and use the development version (master branch) of Go:

``` bash
gimme master
```

To list installed versions of Go:

``` bash
gimme -l

# or

gimme --list

# or

gimme list
```

To force re-installation of an existing Go version:
``` bash
gimme --force 1.4.1

# or

gimme -f 1.4.1

# or even

gimme force 1.4.1
```

To get the version of gimme:
``` bash
gimme -V

# or

gimme --version

# or even

gimme version
```

### `.travis.yml`

The original goal of this project was trivial cross-compilation within Travis.  The following is an example `.travis.yml` file to accomplish this for a normal Go project:

```yaml
language: go

env:
    - GIMME_OS=linux GIMME_ARCH=amd64
    - GIMME_OS=darwin GIMME_ARCH=amd64
    - GIMME_OS=windows GIMME_ARCH=amd64

install:
    - go get -d -v ./...

script:
    - go build -v ./...
```

## Available Versions

### Policy of Gimme

Gimme only supports downloading versions which the Go developers make
available.  If a version of Go is withdrawn, then Gimme has no logic
to go look elsewhere for that version.  Thus as the Go Maintainers withdraw
old releases, they'll stop being available for Gimme to fetch.

Because Gimme caches builds, a testing framework which preserves that cache
might still have older releases available, leading to sporadic failures.  The
only fix is to switch to only requesting currently available versions of Go.

The environment variable `$GIMME_DOWNLOAD_BASE` can be used to point Gimme
at another location, so if you need to keep working with older Go releases,
then you can maintain your own software artifact mirror which preserves those
versions and point Gimme at that instead.

### Asking Gimme about Available Versions

Invoke `gimme -k` or `gimme --known` to have Gimme report the versions which
can be installed; invoking `gimme stable` installs the version which the Go
Maintainers have declared to be stable, and `gimme oldstable` installs the last
stable release one minor version before the current stable. Both of these
involve making network requests to retrieve this information, although the
`--known` output is cached.  (Use `--force-known-update` to ignore the cache).

The `stable` request retrieves <https://golang.org/VERSION?m=text> and reports
that. The `oldstable` request does the same and downgrades it by one minor
version.

The `known` request retrieves <https://golang.org/dl> and parses the page to
find releases.  This is not the same as the location where the images are
retrieved from, thus it's possible for `known` to know about more or fewer
versions than are actually available.  We proceed on the basis that the
documented releases are suitable and undocumented releases no longer are.

This `known` list also includes any versions locally known.

### Asking Gimme what a version is

Gimme now supports the concept of `.x`, as a version suffix; eg, `1.10.x`
might be `1.10` before the release of `1.10.1` but become `1.10.1` once that's
available.

To make this easier, and reduce duplicate invocations, Gimme now supports a
"query" which, instead of producing normal output, just prints the resolution
of a version specifier.  This is the `--resolve` option.  It handles the `.x`
suffix, the `stable` string, and the `oldstable` string; all other inputs are
passed through unchanged, although unknown names will be accompanied by an
error message and an exit code of 2.  A valid version identifier, even if not
currently downloadable from upstream, will resolve successfully.  "Can resolve"
is not "exists".

Thus given a list of versions to invoke against, tooling might do a first pass
to use `--resolve` on each and de-duplicate, so that if an alias and a
hard-coded version map to the same version, then only one invocation needs to
happen.

Gimme only supports `.x` at the end of a version specifier.  
The `--resolve` option must be given a version on the command-line afterwards,
not by any other means.  
The `--resolve` option and mechanism ignores any installed versions and relies
solely upon upstream-exposed lists of available versions and resolvable tags.  
A git tag named ending `.x` will never be found.  
Use of `.x` will not find release candidates, alphas, betas or other
non-release versions: it's only for finding the last stable release.  
Use of `${GIMME_TYPE}` to override `auto` and prevent `git` will affect
`--resolve` by inhibiting use of git tags as valid names.  This is a feature.

Note that because Gimme supports version identifiers which are git tags,
`--resolve` defaults to handling this too.  This means that `--resolve` can be
heavy-weight: without the Go repo cloned, first the entire Go repo must be
cloned.  We default to "correct".  To avoid this, export `GIMME_TYPE=binary`
and disable the git resolution mechanism.