As a developer, I often faced a challenge many of us are familiar with: how can I keep my Golang projects well-versioned, cleanly published, and as automated as possible?

In my daily work – especially in fast-paced projects or when working in teams – I realized time and time again: the existing tools for versioning and deployment in Go were either too rigid, too manual, or simply didn’t meet my needs. I often had to manually set Git tags, write scripts myself, or build complex CI/CD workflows just to release a new version.

It wasn’t just error-prone – it also cost unnecessary time.

For these and many other reasons, the Go Package Manager (gpm) was born – a CLI tool that makes versioning and releasing as easy and automated as possible.

What is the Go Package Manager (gpm)?

It’s a powerful command-line tool designed specifically for Go developers to simplify and centralize key tasks.

Two key features we’ll focus on:

  • Semantic versioning of projects
  • Publishing releases to remote repositories (e.g., GitHub)

What makes it special: gpm elegantly connects both worlds – versioning and deployment – without extra dependencies or complex configurations. Instead of combining various tools or maintaining shell scripts, gpm handles everything through clearly structured commands and configurable hooks.

Customizable scripts like prebump or postpublish allow you to automatically execute custom actions before or after a version bump or release.

Thanks to its Git-native approach, gpm integrates seamlessly into existing workflows and works directly with tags and commits – without introducing proprietary structures.

The bump Command

The bump command solves a problem almost everyone knows: precisely and consistently increasing version numbers according to Semantic Versioning (SemVer).

Instead of manually tagging and updating Git history, bump does it all with one simple, clear command:

  • gpm bump --breaking ⟶ increases MAJOR (e.g., from 1.2.3 to 2.0.0)
  • gpm bump --feature ⟶ increases MINOR (e.g., 1.2.3 → 1.3.0)
  • gpm bump --fix ⟶ increases PATCH (e.g., 1.2.3 → 1.2.4)

The command is fully extensible: with predefined script hooks like prebump or postbump, you can build in automated processes like generating changelogs or testing the software beforehand.

The publish Command

While bump takes care of clean versioning, publish goes a step further: it automates the entire release process – from the new version to pushing to the remote repository.

With a single command, you can version and publish your Go project:

gpm publish --feature

This automatically increases the MINOR version (e.g., 1.2.3 → 1.3.0), creates a Git tag, pushes everything to the remote repository, and executes any defined scripts, such as:

  • prepublish – e.g., for final tests or build steps
  • postpublish – e.g., for deployment triggers

Open Source

The project is freely available on GitHub and open to contributions, testing, and feedback. Whether you have feature ideas, find bugs, or are simply curious – I’m happy about every contribution:

🔗 GitHub Repo: https://github.com/mkloubert/go-package-manager