Yes, binary releases are a convenience for users of common platforms, and not a catch all for every version of every relevant platform.
This is why the source is available. Implementation in Ruby, or any other interpreted language, does not guarantee compatibility. Not all systems have current interpreters or dependencies.
Why? If you are using a platform like that, would you not be adept at building packages from source?
I agree that Ruby is likely already installed on those, but having watched co-workers fight version dependency problems with Ruby Gems on OSX, I tend to believe nothing is a universal solution.
Adept at building C programs that use standard autoconf? Yes. Adept at building go programs? Not so much, and I probably don't even have the tools installed (unlike with ruby). We'll probably reach a point where go is as much a part of the standard unix install as ruby is, but we're not there yet.
The go toolchain bootstraps a small kernel of itself from normal gcc and I have yet to encounter any outrageous configuration issues. It should be at least as simple as building C programs that use standard autoconf, if not simpler.
I've done some work cross-compiling golang on platforms that are not yet officially supported. I think you'll find the support is really remarkably good.
> I probably don't even have the tools installed (unlike with ruby)
Provided correct versions are in place.
In my aforementioned observations, Gem installation was complicated when the parent app relied on gem versions below the code currently in GitHub.
This is of course a problem not unique to Ruby (see: Default Python version on CentOS), based on the number of versioning utilities for Go. I have also had plenty of problems with autoconf's that don't work.
You could've installed Go on all your machines with a provisioning script in the amount of time you've wasted being deliberately obtuse in this thread.