Builds¶

Builds can be customized in multiple ways. You can specify for which GOOS, GOARCH and GOARM binaries are built (GoReleaser will generate a matrix of all combinations), and you can change the name of the binary, flags, environment variables, hooks and more.

Here is a commented builds section with all fields specified:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  # You can have multiple builds defined as a yaml list
  - #
    # ID of the build.
    #
    # Default: Binary name
    id: "my-build"

    # Path to main.go file or main package.
    # Notice: when used with `gomod.proxy`, this must be a package.
    #
    # Default is `.`.
    main: ./cmd/my-app

    # Binary name.
    # Can be a path (e.g. `bin/app`) to wrap the binary in a directory.
    #
    # Default: Project directory name
    binary: program

    # Custom flags.
    #
    # Templates: allowed
    flags:
      - -tags=dev
      - -v

    # Custom asmflags.
    #
    # Templates: allowed
    asmflags:
      - -D mysymbol
      - all=-trimpath={{.Env.GOPATH}}

    # Custom gcflags.
    #
    # Templates: allowed
    gcflags:
      - all=-trimpath={{.Env.GOPATH}}
      - ./dontoptimizeme=-N

    # Custom ldflags.
    #
    # Default: '-s -w -X main.version={{.Version}} -X main.commit={{.Commit}} -X main.date={{.Date}} -X main.builtBy=goreleaser'
    # Templates: allowed
    ldflags:
      - -s -w -X main.build={{.Version}}
      - ./usemsan=-msan

    # Custom Go build mode.
    #
    # Valid options:
    # - `c-shared`
    # - `c-archive`
    #
    # Since: v1.13
    buildmode: c-shared

    # Custom build tags templates.
    tags:
      - osusergo
      - netgo
      - static_build
      - feature

    # Custom environment variables to be set during the builds.
    # Invalid environment variables will be ignored.
    #
    # Default: os.Environ() ++ env config section
    # Templates: allowed (since v1.14)
    env:
      - CGO_ENABLED=0
      # complex, templated envs (v1.14+):
      - >-
        {{- if eq .Os "darwin" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64"}}CC=o64-clang{{- end }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "arm64"}}CC=aarch64-apple-darwin20.2-clang{{- end }}
        {{- end }}
        {{- if eq .Os "windows" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64" }}CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc{{- end }}
        {{- end }}

    # GOOS list to build for.
    # For more info refer to: https://golang.org/doc/install/source#environment
    #
    # Default: [ 'darwin', 'linux', 'windows' ]
    goos:
      - freebsd
      - windows

    # GOARCH to build for.
    # For more info refer to: https://golang.org/doc/install/source#environment
    #
    # Default: [ '386', 'amd64', 'arm64' ]
    goarch:
      - amd64
      - arm
      - arm64

    # GOARM to build for when GOARCH is arm.
    # For more info refer to: https://golang.org/doc/install/source#environment
    #
    # Default: [ 6 ]
    goarm:
      - 6
      - 7

    # GOAMD64 to build when GOARCH is amd64.
    # For more info refer to: https://golang.org/doc/install/source#environment
    #
    # Default: [ 'v1' ]
    goamd64:
      - v2
      - v3

    # GOMIPS and GOMIPS64 to build when GOARCH is mips, mips64, mipsle or mips64le.
    # For more info refer to: https://golang.org/doc/install/source#environment
    #
    # Default: [ 'hardfloat' ]
    gomips:
      - hardfloat
      - softfloat

    # List of combinations of GOOS + GOARCH + GOARM to ignore.
    ignore:
      - goos: darwin
        goarch: 386
      - goos: linux
        goarch: arm
        goarm: 7
      - goarm: mips64
      - gomips: hardfloat
      - goamd64: v4

    # Optionally override the matrix generation and specify only the final list
    # of targets.
    #
    # Format is `{goos}_{goarch}` with their respective suffixes when
    # applicable: `_{goarm}`, `_{goamd64}`, `_{gomips}`.
    #
    # Special values:
    # - go_118_first_class: evaluates to the first-class ports of go1.18.
    # - go_first_class: evaluates to latest stable go first-class ports,
    #   currently same as 1.18.
    #
    # This overrides `goos`, `goarch`, `goarm`, `gomips`, `goamd64` and
    # `ignores`.
    targets:
      # Since: v1.9
      - go_first_class
      # Since: v1.9
      - go_118_first_class
      - linux_amd64_v1
      - darwin_arm64
      - linux_arm_6

    # Set a specific go binary to use when building.
    # It is safe to ignore this option in most cases.
    #
    # Default is "go"
    # Templates: allowed (since v1.23).
    gobinary: "go1.13.4"

    # Sets the command to run to build.
    # Can be useful if you want to build tests, for example,
    # in which case you can set this to "test".
    # It is safe to ignore this option in most cases.
    #
    # Default: build.
    # Since: v1.9
    command: test

    # Set the modified timestamp on the output binary, typically
    # you would do this to ensure a build was reproducible. Pass
    # empty string to skip modifying the output.
    #
    # Templates: allowed.
    mod_timestamp: "{{ .CommitTimestamp }}"

    # Hooks can be used to customize the final binary,
    # for example, to run generators.
    #
    # Templates: allowed
    hooks:
      pre: rice embed-go
      post: ./script.sh {{ .Path }}

    # If true, skip the build.
    # Useful for library projects.
    skip: false

    # By default, GoReleaser will create your binaries inside
    # `dist/${BuildID}_${BuildTarget}`, which is a unique directory per build
    # target in the matrix.
    # You can set subdirs within that folder using the `binary` property.
    #
    # However, if for some reason you don't want that unique directory to be
    # created, you can set this property.
    # If you do, you are responsible for keeping different builds from
    # overriding each other.
    no_unique_dist_dir: true

    # By default, GoReleaser will check if the main filepath has a main
    # function.
    # This can be used to skip that check, in case you're building tests, for
    # example.
    #
    # Since: v1.9
    no_main_check: true

    # Path to project's (sub)directory containing Go code.
    # This is the working directory for the Go build command(s).
    # If dir does not contain a `go.mod` file, and you are using `gomod.proxy`,
    # produced binaries will be invalid.
    # You would likely want to use `main` instead of this.
    #
    # Default: '.'
    dir: go

    # Builder allows you to use a different build implementation.
    # This is a GoReleaser Pro feature.
    # Valid options are: `go` and `prebuilt`.
    #
    # Default: 'go'
    builder: prebuilt

    # Overrides allows to override some fields for specific targets.
    # This can be specially useful when using CGO.
    # Note: it'll only match if the full target matches.
    #
    # Since: v1.5
    overrides:
      - goos: darwin
        goarch: arm64
        goamd64: v1
        goarm: ""
        gomips: ""
        ldflags:
          - foo
        tags:
          - bar
        asmflags:
          - foobar
        gcflags:
          - foobaz
        env:
          - CGO_ENABLED=1

Tip

Learn more about the name template engine.

Info

First-class build targets are gathered by running:

go tool dist list -json | jq -r '.[] | select(.FirstClass) | [.GOOS, .GOARCH] | @tsv'

We also recommend reading the official wiki about Go ports.

Here is an example with multiple binaries:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - main: ./cmd/cli
    id: "cli"
    binary: cli
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
      - windows

  - main: ./cmd/worker
    id: "worker"
    binary: worker
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
      - windows

  - main: ./cmd/tracker
    id: "tracker"
    binary: tracker
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
      - windows

The binary name field supports templating. The following build details are exposed:

Key	Description
.Os	`GOOS`
.Arch	`GOARCH`
.Arm	`GOARM`
.Ext	Extension, e.g. `.exe`
.Target	Build target, e.g. `darwin_amd64`

Passing environment variables to ldflags¶

You can do that by using {{ .Env.VARIABLE_NAME }} in the template, for example:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - ldflags:
   - -s -w -X "main.goversion={{.Env.GOVERSION}}"

Then you can run:

GOVERSION=$(go version) goreleaser

Build Hooks¶

Both pre and post hooks run for each build target, regardless of whether these targets are generated via a matrix of OSes and architectures or defined explicitly.

In addition to simple declarations as shown above multiple hooks can be declared to help retaining reusability of config between different build environments.

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - id: "with-hooks"
    targets:
      - "darwin_amd64"
      - "windows_amd64"
    hooks:
      pre:
        - first-script.sh
        - second-script.sh
      post:
        - upx "{{ .Path }}"
        - codesign -project="{{ .ProjectName }}" "{{ .Path }}"

Each hook can also have its own work directory and environment variables:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - id: "with-hooks"
    targets:
      - "darwin_amd64"
      - "windows_amd64"
    hooks:
      pre:
        - cmd: first-script.sh
          dir:
            "{{ dir .Dist}}"
            # Always print command output, otherwise only visible in debug mode.
            # Since: v1.5
          output: true
          env:
            - HOOK_SPECIFIC_VAR={{ .Env.GLOBAL_VAR }}
        - second-script.sh

All properties of a hook (cmd, dir and env) support templating with post hooks having binary artifact available (as these run after the build). Additionally the following build details are exposed to both pre and post hooks:

Key	Description
.Name	Filename of the binary, e.g. `bin.exe`
.Ext	Extension, e.g. `.exe`
.Path	Absolute path to the binary
.Target	Build target, e.g. `darwin_amd64`

Environment variables are inherited and overridden in the following order:

global (env)
build (builds[].env)
hook (builds[].hooks.pre[].env and builds[].hooks.post[].env)

Go Modules¶

If you use Go 1.11+ with go modules or vgo, when GoReleaser runs it may try to download the dependencies. Since several builds run in parallel, it is very likely to fail.

You can solve this by running go mod tidy before calling goreleaser or by adding a hook doing that on your .goreleaser.yaml file:

# .goreleaser.yaml
before:
  hooks:
    - go mod tidy
# rest of the file...

Define Build Tag¶

GoReleaser uses git describe to get the build tag. You can set a different build tag using the environment variable GORELEASER_CURRENT_TAG. This is useful in scenarios where two tags point to the same commit.

Reproducible Builds¶

To make your releases, checksums and signatures reproducible, you will need to make some (if not all) of the following modifications to the build defaults in GoReleaser:

Modify ldflags: by default main.Date is set to the time GoReleaser is run ({{.Date}}), you can set this to {{.CommitDate}} or just not pass the variable.
Modify mod_timestamp: by default this is empty string — which means it'll be the compilation time, set to {{.CommitTimestamp}} or a constant value instead.
If you do not run your builds from a consistent directory structure, pass -trimpath to flags.
Remove uses of the time template function. This function returns a new value on every call and is not deterministic.

Import pre-built binaries¶

GoReleaser Pro

The prebuilt builder is a GoReleaser Pro feature.

It is also possible to import pre-built binaries into the GoReleaser lifecycle.

Reasons you might want to do that include:

You want to build your binaries in different machines due to CGO
You want to build using a pre-existing Makefile or other tool
You want to speed up the build by running several builds in parallel in different machines

In any case, its pretty easy to do that now:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - # Set the builder to prebuilt
    builder: prebuilt

    # When builder is `prebuilt` there are no defaults for goos, goarch,
    # goarm, gomips, goamd64 and targets, so you always have to specify them:
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
    goarch:
      - amd64
      - arm64
    goamd64:
      - v1

    # prebuilt specific options
    prebuilt:
      # Path must be the template path to the binaries.
      # GoReleaser removes the `dist` folder before running, so you will likely
      # want to put the binaries elsewhere.
      # This field is required when using the `prebuilt` builder.
      path: output/mybin_{{ .Os }}_{{ .Arch }}{{ with .Amd64 }}_{{ . }}{{ end }}/mybin

    # Use 'binary' to set the final name of your binary.
    # This is the name that will be used in archives et al.
    binary: bin/mybin

Tip

You can think of prebuilt.path as being the "external path" and the binary as being the "internal path to binary".

This example config will import into your release pipeline the following binaries:

output/mybin_linux_amd64_v1
output/mybin_linux_arm64
output/mybin_darwin_amd64_v1
output/mybin_darwin_arm64

The other steps of the pipeline will act as if those were built by GoReleaser itself. There is no difference in how the binaries are handled.

Tip

A cool tip here, specially when using CGO, is that you can have one .goreleaser.yaml file just for the builds, build each in its own machine with goreleaser build --single-target and have a second .goreleaser.yaml file that imports those binaries and release them. This tip can also be used to speed up the build process if you run all the builds in different machines in parallel.

Warning

GoReleaser will try to stat the final path, if any error happens while doing that (e.g. file does not exist or permission issues), GoReleaser will fail.

Warning

When using the prebuilt binary, there are no defaults for goos, goarch, goarm, gomips and goamd64. You'll need to either provide them or the final targets matrix.

If you'd like to see this in action, check this example on GitHub.

A note about folder names inside `dist`¶

By default, GoReleaser will create your binaries inside dist/${BuildID}_${BuildTarget}, which is a unique directory per build target in the matrix.

Those names have no guarantees of remaining the same from one version to another. If you really need to access them from outside GoReleaser, you should be able to consistently get the path of a binary by parsing dist/artifacts.json.

You can also set builds.no_unique_dist_dir (as documented earlier in this page), but in that case you are responsible for preventing name conflicts.

Why is there a `_v1` suffix on `amd64` builds?¶

Go 1.18 introduced the GOAMD64 option, and v1 is the default value for that option.

Since you can have GoReleaser build for multiple different GOAMD64 targets, it adds that suffix to prevent name conflicts. The same thing happens for arm and GOARM, mips and GOMIPS and others.

Go's first class ports¶

The targets option can take a go_first_class special value as target, which will evaluate to the list of first class ports as defined in the Go wiki.

You can read more about it here.

Building shared or static libraries¶

Since: v1.13

GoReleaser supports compiling and releasing C shared or static libraries, by configuring the Go build mode.

This can be set with buildmode in your build. It now supports c-shared and c-archive. Other values will transparently be applied to the build line (via the -buildmode flag), but GoReleaser will not attempt to configure any additional logic.

GoReleaser will:

set the correct file extension for the target OS.
package the generated header file (.h) in the release bundle.

Example usage:

# .goreleaser.yaml
builds:
  - id: "my-library"

    # Configure the buildmode flag to output a shared library
    buildmode: "c-shared" # or "c-archive" for a static library

Complex template environment variables¶

Since v1.14

Builds environment variables accept templates.

You can leverage that to have a single build configuration with different environment variables for each platform, for example.

A common example of this is the variables CC and CXX.

Here are two different examples:

Using multiple envs¶

This example creates once CC_ and CXX_ variable for each platform, and then set CC and CXX to the right one:

# .goreleaser.yml
builds:
  - id: mybin
    binary: mybin
    main: .
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
      - windows
    goarch:
      - amd64
      - arm64
    env:
      - CGO_ENABLED=0
      - CC_darwin_amd64=o64-clang
      - CXX_darwin_amd64=o64-clang+
      - CC_darwin_arm64=aarch64-apple-darwin20.2-clang
      - CXX_darwin_arm64=aarch64-apple-darwin20.2-clang++
      - CC_windows_amd64=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gc
      - CXX_windows_amd64=x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++
      - 'CC={{ index .Env (print "CC_" .Os "_" .Arch) }}'
      - 'CXX={{ index .Env (print "CXX_" .Os "_" .Arch) }}'

Using `if` statements¶

This example uses if statements to set CC and CXX:

# .goreleaser.yml
builds:
  - id: mybin
    binary: mybin
    main: .
    goos:
      - linux
      - darwin
      - windows
    goarch:
      - amd64
      - arm64
    env:
      - CGO_ENABLED=0
      - >-
        {{- if eq .Os "darwin" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64"}}CC=o64-clang{{- end }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "arm64"}}CC=aarch64-apple-darwin20.2-clang{{- end }}
        {{- end }}
        {{- if eq .Os "windows" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64" }}CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc{{- end }}
        {{- end }}
      - >-
        {{- if eq .Os "darwin" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64"}}CXX=o64-clang+{{- end }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "arm64"}}CXX=aarch64-apple-darwin20.2-clang++{{- end }}
        {{- end }}
        {{- if eq .Os "windows" }}
          {{- if eq .Arch "amd64" }}CXX=x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++{{- end }}
        {{- end }}