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macOS Universal Binaries

macOS Universal Binaries

GoReleaser can create macOS Universal Binaries - also known as Fat Binaries. Those binaries are in a special format that contains both arm64 and amd64 executables in a single file.

Here’s how to use it:

.goreleaser.yaml
universal_binaries:
  - # ID of the resulting universal binary.
    #
    # Default: the project name.
    id: foo

    # IDs to use to filter the built binaries.
    #
    # Notice that you shouldn't include different apps' IDs here.
    # This field is usually only required if you are using CGO.
    #
    # Default: the value of the id field.
    ids:
      - build1
      - build2

    # Universal binary name.
    #
    # You will want to change this if you have multiple builds!
    #
    # Default: '{{ .ProjectName }}'.
    # Templates: allowed.
    name_template: "{{.ProjectName}}_{{.Version}}"

    # Whether to remove the previous single-arch binaries from the artifact list.
    # If left as false, your end release might have as much as three
    # archives for macOS: 'amd64', 'arm64' and 'all'.
    replace: true

    # Set the modified timestamp on the output binary, typically
    # you would do this to ensure a build was reproducible.
    # Pass an 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 }}
Learn more about the template language.

For more info about hooks, see the build section.

The minimal configuration for most setups would look like this:

.goreleaser.yaml
universal_binaries:
  - replace: true

That config will join your default build macOS binaries into a Universal Binary, removing the single-arch binaries from the artifact list.

From there, the Arch template variable for this file will be all. You can use the Go template engine to remove it if you’d like.

Warning

You’ll want to change name_template for each id you add in universal binaries, otherwise they’ll have the same name.

Example:

universal_binaries:
  - id: foo
    name_template: bin1
  - id: bar
    name_template: bin2

Naming templates

Most fields that support templates will also support the following build details:

KeyDescription
.OsGOOS, always darwin
.ArchGOARCH, always all
.ArmGOARM, always empty
.ExtExtension, always empty
.TargetBuild target, always darwin_all
.PathThe binary path
.NameThe binary name

Note

Notice that .Path and .Name will only be available after they are evaluated, so they are mostly only useful in the post hooks.

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