Go projects can be run in Devbox by adding the Go SDK to your project. If your project uses cgo or compiles against C libraries, you should also include them in your packages to ensure Go can compile successfully

Example Repo

devbox add go, or add the following to your devbox.json

  "packages": [
    "go@latest"
  ]

This will install the latest version of the Go SDK. You can find other installable versions of Go by running devbox search go. You can also view the available versions on Nixhub

If you need additional C libraries, you can add them along with gcc to your package list. For example, if libcap is required for your project:

"packages": [
    "go",
    "gcc",
    "libcap"
]

This example configures a few environment variables in devbox.json:

"env": {
    "GOPATH": "$HOME/go/",
    "PATH":   "$PATH:$HOME/go/bin"
}

• GOPATH is set to $HOME/go, which is Go's default location. Keeping the GOPATH outside of your project directory lets the module cache ($GOPATH/pkg/mod) be shared across projects and keeps build artifacts out of your source tree.
• Adding $GOPATH/bin to PATH makes tools installed with go install available inside the Devbox shell.

Which Go toolchain is active is determined by the go binary on PATH (here, the one provided by Nix). The init_hook sets GOROOT to match that installation, which some tooling relies on:

"shell": {
    "init_hook": [
        "export \"GOROOT=$(go env GOROOT)\""
    ]
}

Note on GOPATH: avoid setting GOPATH to your project directory (e.g. "GOPATH": "$PWD"). When a module (a directory containing go.mod) lives inside GOPATH, the Go toolchain falls back to legacy GOPATH mode and prints a warning:

go: warning: ignoring go.mod in $GOPATH /path/to/your/project

Using $HOME/go (as above) keeps module-aware builds working as expected.