🐧 Linux Setup

If you're here, you're probably running something like Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, or maybe even Gentoo on a thinkpad with stickers. Either way: respects.

You’re in a great spot to build games for the Nintendo 64 using GoSprite64.

Most of the setup is automated via mage Setup, but if you want to understand or troubleshoot the magic, read on.

🧱 Prerequisites

You’ll need just a few things to get rolling:

✅ Install Go

Your distro probably has a package for it:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install golang

# Fedora
sudo dnf install golang

# Arch
sudo pacman -S go

Or download and install it manually from go.dev.

Make sure you can use it by giving it as try, run: go version.

✅ Install Mage

go install github.com/magefile/mage@latest

Verify you can use it: which mage.

✅ Install direnv

This allows your terminal to automatically switch Go environments when entering ~/toolchains/nintendo64.

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install direnv

# Fedora
sudo dnf install direnv

# Arch
sudo pacman -S direnv

After that, hook direnv into your shell. Edit either ~/.zshrcor ~/.bashrc and add one of the following lines:

eval "$(direnv hook zsh)"   # for ZSH
eval "$(direnv hook bash)"  # for bash

Then run either source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc respectively. After this, direnv will automatically load the N64 environment when you're inside ~/toolchains/nintendo64.

🧙‍♂️ Run the Setup

Now clone the repo and run:

git clone https://github.com/drpaneas/gosprite64
cd gosprite64
mage Setup

What happens now:

  • 🧬 A custom Go toolchain for MIPS gets cloned and compiled
  • 🛠 A GOPATH and GOROOT get set up at ~/toolchains/nintendo64/gopath and ~/toolchains/nintendo64/go respectively.
  • 🧪 emgo tool gets installed
  • ⚙ An .envrc file is created at ~/toolchains/nintendo64 so that direnv can auto-activate your dev environment

You can verify all those by going to cd ~/toolchains/nintendo64/ and witness your Go env setup changing.

Outside of the toolchain's directory:

$ cd; go env GOROOT

# Output:
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/go/1.23.3/libexec # my system uses Go 1.23

$ cd; emgo

# Output:
zsh: command not found: emgo # expected, not from my std GOBIN

Inside of the toolchain's directory:

cd ~/toolchains/nintendo64 

# Output:
direnv: loading ~/toolchains/nintendo64/.envrc
direnv: export +GOBIN +GOROOT ~GOPATH ~PATH 


go env GOROOT

# Output
/Users/pgeorgia/toolchains/nintendo64/go

emgo

# Output
Go is a tool for managing Go source code.