Fast and easy Go binaries delivery

I have some apps written in Go, which I deliver as binaries for each platform using GitHub releases. Until now, I was doing it with a very simple shell script.

But, I also wanted to dist these new releases in a homebrew tap. Adding that in the script would be kind of trivial, but I didn’t like the way I was using it all (arguments, hacks, etc).

I could, of course, change the formulas by hand, but I’m lazy and that seems just too much work for me.

So, time to my shell script to evolve!

GoReleaser

I wanted a tool that:

• provides reproducible builds
• is fast
• is easy to wrap with the CI
• distributes itself

So, I created goreleaser!

GoReleaser can build and release go binaries in tar.gz for several platforms, and can create/update homebrew formulaes. All that by having a simple goreleaser.yml in the repository root:

repo: goreleaser/releaser
binary_name: release
brew:
  repo: goreleaser/homebrew-formulae
build:
  oses:
    - windows
    - darwin
    - linux

Then, I basically wire this in the .travis.yml:

after_success: test -n "$TRAVIS_TAG" && curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/goreleaser/get/master/latest | bash

Which generates release like this on GitHub:

It is so easy that I’m already using it in all my suitable Go projects:

• GoReleaser itself!
• Antibody - A faster and simpler antigen written in Golang
• CloneOrg - Clone all repos of a github organization
• ForkCleaner - Cleans up old and inactive forks on your github account
• GithubVacations - Automagically ignore all notifications related to work when you are on vacations
• KarmaHub - Compares the amount of issues and pull requests you created with the amount of comments and code reviews you did
• OrgStats - Get the contributor stats summary from all repos of any given organization
• TorrentWatcher - Automagically download torrent files to ~/Downloads

Roadmap

The roadmap is pretty much what you find in the issues, but, IMO, the highlights are:

• bintray support
• create linux packages (with fpm or something)
• post/pre build hooks

I believe those features will enable GoReleaser to be even more useful!

Community Feedback

I was very glad to see the results of GoReleaser!

• First page on /r/golang for 2 days (and top 1 most of that time)
• 300+ stars in just a few days
• GitHub trending on Go (still at the time of writing)
• Several comments on the reddit post
• This issue

Thank you all!