How do I exclude the binary from the archive?

[chabad360]

Hey, I've been trying to put my binary in a .app bundle for MacOS (it's a GUI application), but I want to only include the .app folder (with the binary copied into it in a hook) in the archive but not the binary itself. Is there anyway to do this (or a better way to package for MacOS)?

My .goreleaser.yml (I've removed the windows bits otherwise it's a bit large):

project_name: resolume-timecode
before:
  hooks:
    - go mod download
builds:
  - id: darwin
    goos:
      - darwin
    goarch:
      - amd64
    env:
      - CGO_ENABLED=1
    flags:
      - -mod=readonly
      - -trimpath
    ldflags:
      - -s -w
      - -X main.version={{.Version}}
      - -X main.Date={{.CommitDate}}
    mod_timestamp: '{{ .CommitTimestamp }}'
    hooks:
      post:
        - upx {{ .Path }}
        - sh macos.sh resolume-timecode images/logo.svg "me.chabad360.resolume-timecode" {{ .Major }} {{ .Minor }}
        - cp {{ .Path }} resolume-timecode.app/Contents/MacOS/
checksum:
  name_template: 'checksums.txt'
changelog:
  sort: asc
  filters:
    exclude:
      - '^chore:'
      - '^ci:'
      - '^docs?:'
      - '^tests?:'
release:
  github:
    owner: chabad360
    name: resolume-timecode
  draft: true
  prerelease: auto
archives:
  - id: darwin
    builds:
      - darwin
    format: zip
    wrap_in_directory: true
    replacements:
      darwin: macOS
    files:
      - LICENSE
      - README.MD
      - resolume-timecode.app

[caarlos0]

its not possible right now...

[caarlos0]

on windows most people want installers, then you'll need more tools...

on macs, I think the issue is creating the dmg file (which is a filesystem)

for the desktop, if you provide it to goreleaser it should already work, just need to wire it in the nfpm config...

[chabad360]

Fair, but even just the basic bits like the .app folder structure and windows metadata would be nice, it's rather hard to do otherwise. At the very least an option to create an archive that doesn't necessarily contain the binary would go a long way to making this easier.

[clobrano]

It's been a while, but I'd like to add +1 to this.
I'm playing with goreleaser to release kubernetes operators where the release is actually a bundle folder, not the binary. So I'd like to remove the binary from the archive as well.

[caarlos0]

@clobrano for the specific case of k8s, I think you can set archives.meta: true https://goreleaser.com/customization/archive/

@chabad360 for the app bundles, the proper packaging is a DMG, which has a replace option to remove the macOS archives: https://goreleaser.com/customization/dmg/

[clobrano]

@caarlos0, archives.meta: true looks promising (I don't recall it was there when I commented originally), I'll have a look, thanks 👍

[clobrano]

I'd like to keep this open, unless the feature as been marked as unwanted at all