Obtain user's home directory

Is the following the best way of obtaining the running user's home directory? Or is there a specific function that I've ovelooked?

os.Getenv("HOME")

If the above is correct, does anyone happen to know whether this approach is guaranteed to work on non-Linux platforms, e.g. Windows?

Since go 1.12 the recommended way is:

package main
import (
	"os"
	"fmt"
	"log"
)
func main() {
	dirname, err := os.UserHomeDir()
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal( err )
	}
	fmt.Println( dirname )
}

Old recommendation:

In go 1.0.3 ( probably earlier, too ) the following works:

package main
import (
	"os/user"
	"fmt"
	"log"
)
func main() {
	usr, err := user.Current()
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal( err )
	}
	fmt.Println( usr.HomeDir )
}

os.UserHomeDir()

In go1.12+ you can use os.UserHomeDir()

home, err := os.UserHomeDir()

See https://golang.org/pkg/os/#UserHomeDir

That should work even without CGO enabled (i.e. FROM scratch) and without having to parse /etc/passwd or other such nonsense.

For example,

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"runtime"
)

func UserHomeDir() string {
	if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
		home := os.Getenv("HOMEDRIVE") + os.Getenv("HOMEPATH")
		if home == "" {
			home = os.Getenv("USERPROFILE")
		}
		return home
	}
	return os.Getenv("HOME")
}

func main() {
	dir := UserHomeDir()
	fmt.Println(dir)
}

Similar answer to @peterSO but respects the XDG_CONFIG_HOME path for linux.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"runtime"
)

func userHomeDir() string {
	if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
		home := os.Getenv("HOMEDRIVE") + os.Getenv("HOMEPATH")
		if home == "" {
			home = os.Getenv("USERPROFILE")
		}
		return home
	} else if runtime.GOOS == "linux" {
		home := os.Getenv("XDG_CONFIG_HOME")
		if home != "" {
			return home
		}
	}
	return os.Getenv("HOME")
}

func main() {
	fmt.Println(userHomeDir())
}

Here's a nice, concise way to do it (if you're only running on a UNIX based system):

import (
  "os"
)

var home string = os.Getenv("HOME")

That just queries the $HOME environment variable.

--- Edit ---

I now see that this same method was suggested above. I'll leave this example here as a distilled solution.

You should use the environment variable USERPROFILE or HOMEPATH under Windows. See Recognized Environment Variables (a more apropos documentation link would be welcomed).

go1.8rc2 has the go/build/defaultGOPATH function which gets the home directory.
https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.8rc2/src/go/build/build.go#L260-L277

The following code is extracted from the defaultGOPATH function.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"
	"runtime"
)

func UserHomeDir() string {
	env := "HOME"
	if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
		env = "USERPROFILE"
	} else if runtime.GOOS == "plan9" {
		env = "home"
	}
	return os.Getenv(env)
}

func main() {
	dir := UserHomeDir()
	fmt.Println(dir)
}