Override hardcoded registry and image name?

To avoid hard-coding the registry and image name in your .goreleaser.yaml, pass them as environment variables. This recipe shows how to do that with the GoReleaser GitHub Action.

For more details, see the GoReleaser GitHub Action documentation.

The GoReleaser GitHub Action lets you pass environment variables that GoReleaser can read in .goreleaser.yaml with the {{ .Env.<name> }} syntax. Define the registry and image name as workflow environment variables, then pass them to GoReleaser through the action’s env section:

.github/workflows/release.yml

jobs:
  # use goreleaser to cross-compile go binaries and add them to GitHub release
  goreleaser:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      REGISTRY: "ghcr.io"
      IMAGE_NAME: "google/addlicense"
    steps:
      # ...
      - name: Run GoReleaser
        uses: goreleaser/goreleaser-action@v7
        with:
          distribution: goreleaser
          version: latest
          args: release --clean
        env:
          REGISTRY: ${{ env.REGISTRY }}
          IMAGE_NAME: ${{ env.IMAGE_NAME }}
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Now you can reference them in your .goreleaser.yaml:

.goreleaser.yaml

dockers:
  - image_templates:
      - "{{ .Env.REGISTRY }}/{{ .Env.IMAGE_NAME }}:{{ .Tag }}-amd64"
    dockerfile: Dockerfile.goreleaser
    use: buildx
    build_flag_templates:
      - "--pull"
      - "--label=org.opencontainers.image.created={{.Date}}"
      - "--label=org.opencontainers.image.name={{.ProjectName}}"
      - "--label=org.opencontainers.image.revision={{.FullCommit}}"
      - "--label=org.opencontainers.image.version={{.Version}}"
      - "--label=org.opencontainers.image.source={{.GitURL}}"
      - "--platform=linux/amd64"

Last updated on August 30, 2026

Using the `main.version` ldflag