Publishing Go Binaries the Right Way: My Journey Into GoReleaser & GitHub Releases

If you’ve ever built a Go project and wanted to share the binary with others then you’ve probably hit the same questions I did:

• How do I generate binaries for multiple platforms?
• How do people actually publish versioned releases on GitHub?
• Why does every serious project have tags like v0.9.3?
• What are those checksum files and why do package managers rely on them?

Recently, I decided to explore this entire workflow properly by building a Go project and wiring it up with GoReleaser. What I expected to be a quick experiment turned out to be a surprisingly enlightening journey through some essential software-release concepts.

This post is a summary of everything I learned. Explained simply, cleanly, and practically.

Why Releases Matter

On GitHub, a release is more than just a commit. It’s a versioned snapshot of your project that users can download and run. A release usually includes:

• Compiled binaries
• Compressed archives
• Checksums
• A changelog
• Metadata like version and build date

When you run a big open-source tool (Terraform, kubectl, Go itself), you’re actually downloading one of these GitHub Releases.

And the key trigger for a release? A Git tag.

Tags: The Heartbeat of Versioning

A tag marks an official version of your code like v0.1.0, v1.0.0, etc.

You create one with:

git tag -a v0.1.0 -m "First release"
git push origin v0.1.0

This does not push your code; that’s what git push origin main is for. Instead, pushing a tag pushes a pointer to a specific commit.

Tools like GoReleaser and GitHub Actions react to these tags and generate releases automatically.

Tags = Versions.
Branches = Work in progress.

Introducing GoReleaser

GoReleaser is a tool that takes your Go project and packages it into polished, production-ready releases. With a single command, it:

• Builds binaries for multiple OS/arch combinations
• Embeds version info using ldflags
• Generates .tar.gz or .zip archives
• Produces a checksum file
• Creates a GitHub Release
• Uploads everything automatically

In other words: GoReleaser does for binaries what Docker does for containers automates the painful parts.

The Only Setup You Really Need

All GoReleaser projects start with one config file: .goreleaser.yaml

This file defines:

• What to build
• Which platforms to target
• What your project is named
• How archives and checksums are generated
• Where to publish the release

Once that’s in place, the real fun begins.

GitHub Tokens: Why GoReleaser Needs One

GoReleaser needs permission to talk to GitHub on your behalf. This is done via a Personal Access Token with:

• Repository access
• Contents: Read and write

Once generated, you export it:

export GITHUB_TOKEN="your_token_here"

Now the GoReleaser CLI can authenticate and create releases.

Building and Publishing the Release

The moment of truth:

goreleaser release --clean

Here’s what happens:

1. GoReleaser checks that your working tree is clean (no uncommitted files allowed — it enforces discipline)
2. It reads the latest Git tag
3. Builds binaries for Linux, macOS, Windows
4. Produces archives like: goreleaser-starter_0.1.1_linux_amd64.tar.gz
5. Generates checksums.txt (used to verify authenticity and avoid tampering)
6. Creates a GitHub Release
7. Uploads all artifacts

In seconds, your tiny Go program becomes a fully packaged, multi-platform, cryptographically verifiable, downloadable release.

That’s powerful.

Why Checksums Matter

A checksum is a SHA256 fingerprint of a file:

• If a binary is corrupted → checksum won’t match
• If someone tampers with it → checksum won’t match
• Package managers rely on checksums for security

Checksum files give users confidence that the file they downloaded is exactly what you published.

Archives: Packaging Binaries Properly

GitHub releases don’t distribute raw binaries alone. They are usually wrapped in archives (.tar.gz or .zip) because:

• Archives are consistent across OSes
• They preserve permissions
• They allow bundling additional files (README, LICENSE, config)

GoReleaser automates this and applies platform-appropriate formats.

Putting It All Together

By the end of this exercise, I had a complete CI-grade release system:

• Write code
• Commit
• Tag version
• Push tag
• Run GoReleaser

Result: A polished release page with everything a real-world project provides.

This small experiment helped me understand the exact process behind professional Go projects that publish binaries and it gave me a clean starter template I can reuse across future tools.

Final Thoughts

Learning GoReleaser wasn’t just about generating binaries. It taught me the foundational workflow of software distribution:

• Why tags matter
• How GitHub Releases are structured
• What archives and checksums are for
• How version metadata is embedded
• How automation improves consistency

This knowledge scales well beyond small Go projects as it’s the backbone of many open-source and enterprise release pipelines today.