goreleaser/www/docs/customization/nightlies.md

Nightlies

Whether if you need beta builds or a rolling-release system, the nightly builds feature will do it for you.

To enable it, you must use the --nightly flag in the goreleaser release command.

You also have some customization options available:

nightly:
  # Allows you to change the version of the generated nightly release.
  #
  # Note that some pipes require this to be semantic version compliant (nfpm,
  # for example).
  #
  # Default: `{{ incpatch .Version }}-{{ .ShortCommit }}-nightly`.
  # Templates: allowed.
  version_template: "{{ incpatch .Version }}-devel"

  # Tag name to create if publish_release is enabled.
  tag_name: devel

  # Whether to publish a release or not.
  # Only works on GitHub.
  publish_release: true

  # Whether to delete previous pre-releases for the same `tag_name` when
  # releasing.
  # This allows you to keep a single pre-release.
  keep_single_release: true

!!! warning

Do not use the `{{.Tag}}` field in the `version_template`, as the version
should not have the leading `v`.

How it works

When you run GoReleaser with --nightly, it will set the Version template variable to the evaluation of nightly.name_template. This means that if you use {{ .Version }} on your name templates, you'll get the nightly version.

What is skipped when using --nightly?

• Go mod proxying;
• GitHub/GitLab/Gitea releases (unless specified);
• Homebrew taps;
• Scoop manifests;
• Arch User Repositories;
• Krew Plugin Manifests;
• Milestone closing;
• All announcers;

Everything else is executed normally. Just make sure to use the Version template variable instead of Tag. You can also check if it is a nightly build inside a template with:

{{ if .IsNightly }}something{{ else }}something else{{ end }}

!!! info "Maybe you are looking for something else?"

- If just want to build the binaries, and no packages at all, check the
  [`goreleaser build` command](../cmd/goreleaser_build.md);
- If you actually want to create a local "snapshot" build, check out the
  [snapshots documentation](snapshots.md).