These tools actually do exist for Go, they just aren't packaged in an IDE. The biggest problem with them is (in my opinion), a lack of documentation around the usefulness and use of these tools. Tools like gofmt allow for automated formatting, mass renaming, and import moving, for example.
One of the things I think it great about Go is how easy the developers of Go have made it for other people to tie into the Go compiler's lexical analyzer, giving it an easy API to work with and making it a core package, which is why there are so many mutant compilers built for Go. Using these, I think it would actually be very easy to write a powerful IDE for Go, it just hasn't been done yet because I think Go's target audience (systems programmers) are not all that interested in IDE's, but that is just conjecture. Right now, the closest you can get to an IDE experience is to use the faith's vim-go set of plugins for vim, which allow you to map keys for all of the basic IDE functions and even allow you to browse compilation errors and formatting errors in a seperate pane with controls to navigate to the line in files where those errors occurred. If you are not comfortable with vim, however, I do not know of any alternatives at this time.
I haven't done this myself, but I have read that you can use the gdb to debug Go code.
> because I think Go's target audience (systems programmers) are not all that interested in IDE's,
Target audience or not; it seems that most people that write about Go and state their background have a background in some scripting/dynamic language. But those are the people that write about stuff like that; they may be a vocal minority, for all I know. But Pike has written that he was surprised that relatively few from languages like C++ has made a transition.
One of the things I think it great about Go is how easy the developers of Go have made it for other people to tie into the Go compiler's lexical analyzer, giving it an easy API to work with and making it a core package, which is why there are so many mutant compilers built for Go. Using these, I think it would actually be very easy to write a powerful IDE for Go, it just hasn't been done yet because I think Go's target audience (systems programmers) are not all that interested in IDE's, but that is just conjecture. Right now, the closest you can get to an IDE experience is to use the faith's vim-go set of plugins for vim, which allow you to map keys for all of the basic IDE functions and even allow you to browse compilation errors and formatting errors in a seperate pane with controls to navigate to the line in files where those errors occurred. If you are not comfortable with vim, however, I do not know of any alternatives at this time.
I haven't done this myself, but I have read that you can use the gdb to debug Go code.