Split & Merge

With GoReleaser Pro, you can split and merge goreleaser release runs.

{{< g_featpro >}}

This feature can help in some areas:

1. CGO, as you can build each platform in their target OS and merge later;
2. Native packaging and signing for Windows and macOS (more features for this will be added soon);
3. Speed up slow builds, by splitting them into multiple workers;

Usage

You don't really need to set anything up. To get started, run:

goreleaser release --clean --split
GOOS=darwin goreleaser release --clean --split
GGOOS=windows goreleaser release --clean --split

Note that this step will push your Docker images as well. Docker manifests are not created yet, though.

• In the first example, it'll build for the current GOOS (as returned by runtime.GOOS).
• In the second, it'll use the informed GOOS. This env will also bleed to things like before hooks, so be aware that any go run commands ran by GoReleaser there might fail.
• The third example uses the informed GGOOS, which is used only to filter which targets should be build, and does not affect anything else (as the second option does).

Those commands will create the needed artifacts for each platform in dist/$GOOS.

You can also specify GOARCH and GGOARCH, which only take effect if you set partial.by to target.

Now, to continue, run:

goreleaser continue --merge

This last step will run some extra things that were not run during the previous step:

• merge previous contexts and artifacts lists
• pull previously built images
• create the source archive (if enabled)
• checksum all artifacts
• sign artifacts (according to configuration)
• SBOM artifacts (according to configuration)
• run all the publishers
• run all the announcers

[!WARNING] Please notice that this step will not run anything that the previous step already did. For example, it will not build anything again, nor run any hooks you have defined. It will only merge the previous results and publish them.

You can also run the publishing and announce steps separately:

goreleaser publish --merge
goreleaser announce --merge

Customization

You can choose by what you want your pipeline to be split by:

partial:
  # By what you want to build the partial things.
  #
  # Valid options are `target` and `goos`:
  # - `target`: `GOOS` + `GOARCH`.
  # - `goos`: `GOOS` only
  #
  # Default: `goos`.
  by: target

Integration with GitHub Actions

You can find an example project here. Feel free to dive into the workflow and the GoReleaser configuration.

The main thing to keep an eye on is the use of the cache action. Make sure to use a specific key for the release to prevent mixing, for example, a snapshot or nightly build with a production one.