Go Release Engineering: Versions, Compatibility, and Distribution

A release is a promise. Once a version is tagged and fetched through the module proxy, it is immutable and someone depends on it forever. This skill covers how to make that promise correctly — for libraries (API compatibility) and applications (binary distribution).

When to Activate

• Cutting or planning a release of a Go module or binary
• Reviewing whether a change is breaking for a published library
• Deprecating or removing exported API
• Editing go.mod in a way that affects dependents (go directive, dependencies)
• Setting up binary distribution (GoReleaser, ldflags, multi-platform builds)
• Recovering from a bad release

The Compatibility Promise

Versioning Semantics in Go