anodizer

The release pipeline built for Rust — workspace-aware, reproducible, and signed by default.

Anodizer reads a declarative config file and runs your entire release from a single anodizer release command: build, archive, checksum, changelog, sign, release, publish, and announce. It's built around the Rust ecosystem — Cargo workspaces, Cargo.lock-aware version bumps, crates.io, and byte-reproducible artifacts.

Written by Claude; maintained by us.

See What works (with proof) for a per-feature status — every "live" claim links to a real published artifact you can verify yourself.

Why anodizer?

Your release is a Cargo workspace — not a bag of loose binaries. anodizer is built that way from the ground up.

• It speaks Cargo. Per-crate release cadences, per-crate tags, and a tag resolver let a single crate and a thirty-crate monorepo share one config. anodizer tag and anodizer bump rewrite Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock, then commit, tag, and push atomically — no orphaned bump commit, no hand-rolled git push, no lockfile drift.
• crates.io, published in the right order. Dependency-aware ordering with sparse-index polling holds each crate until the ones it depends on have propagated — so a workspace publish never races itself into a transient "version not found."
• Cross-compiles without the toolchain tax. musl, glibc, Windows, and macOS from one machine via cargo-zigbuild or cross. No rustup target add rituals, no per-target CI shards to babysit.
• Reproducible — and it proves it. Deterministic artifacts by default, then anodizer check determinism rebuilds them and byte-compares. "Reproducible" becomes a fact your CI enforces, not a claim in your release notes.
• Signing and attestation are first-class. cosign + GPG for binaries, archives, checksums, and images, plus SLSA-style build provenance — wired in a few lines, not bolted on after a CVE scare.

Then the long tail that Rust authors actually hit: generated per-crate READMEs, cargo-binstall metadata derived straight from your config (no hand-maintained pkg-url that 404s), version_files to pin your docs and install scripts to the released version, and post-release install smoke tests that catch a broken artifact before your users do.

Already know GoReleaser? anodizer's {{ .Field }} template syntax will feel right at home. Moving from cargo-dist, release-plz, or cargo-release? The migration guides map your setup straight over.

Features

Build

• Cross-platform builds via cargo-zigbuild, cross, or native cargo build
• Per-build hooks (pre/post), environment variables, feature flags, and target overrides
• UPX binary compression with per-target filtering
• Workspace support with per-crate independent release cadences

Package

• Archives in tar.gz, tar.xz, tar.zst, zip, gz, or raw binary format with OS-specific overrides
• Linux packages (.deb, .rpm, .apk, .archlinux, .ipk) via nFPM with full lifecycle scripts
• Snapcraft snaps with prime-dir architecture
• macOS DMG disk images and PKG installers
• Windows MSI and NSIS installers
• Flatpak bundles
• AppImage portable Linux applications
• Makeself self-extracting archives
• Source RPMs (.src.rpm)
• Source archives with file filtering
• SBOM generation (CycloneDX/SPDX)
• Checksums with SHA-256, SHA-512, SHA3, BLAKE2b, BLAKE2s, BLAKE3, CRC32, MD5, and more

Sign

• GPG and cosign signing for binaries, archives, checksums, Docker images, and SBOMs
• Multiple independent signing configurations
• Conditional signing via template expressions
• Build provenance attestations (SLSA-style) for binaries and artifacts

Publish

• GitHub/GitLab/Gitea Releases with asset uploads, draft/prerelease detection, header/footer templates
• crates.io with dependency-aware ordering and index polling
• Homebrew formula and cask generation
• Scoop manifest generation
• Chocolatey package generation
• Winget manifest generation
• AUR PKGBUILD and .SRCINFO generation
• Krew plugin manifest generation
• Nix derivation generation
• SchemaStore catalog registration for editor autocomplete of your config files
• MCP registry server-manifest publishing (Model Context Protocol)
• Docker multi-arch images via docker buildx
• Blob storage uploads (S3, GCS, Azure)
• Artifactory, Cloudsmith, Fury, Docker Hub
• Custom publisher commands

Announce

• Discord, Slack, Telegram, Teams, Mattermost
• Email, Reddit, Twitter/X, Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn
• OpenCollective, Discourse
• Generic webhooks with custom headers and templates

Advanced

• Tera templates (Jinja2-like) with GoReleaser-compatible {{ .Field }} syntax
• Nightly builds with date-based versioning
• Config includes for shared configuration
• Split/merge CI for fan-out parallel builds
• Monorepo support with independent workspaces
• Auto-tagging from commit message directives
• Reproducible builds with mod_timestamp and builds_info
• Version-string file syncing (version_files) to keep docs, scripts, and manifests in lockstep at tag
• Post-release verification with install smoke tests
• JSON Schema for editor autocomplete and validation

Installation

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew install tj-smith47/tap/anodizer

Cargo

cargo install anodizer

From source

git clone https://github.com/tj-smith47/anodizer.git
cd anodizer
cargo install --path crates/cli

Quick Start

# Generate a starter config from your Cargo workspace
anodizer init > .anodizer.yaml

# Validate your config
anodizer check

# Check that required tools are available
anodizer healthcheck

# Build a snapshot (no publishing)
anodizer release --snapshot

# Dry run (full pipeline, no side effects)
anodizer release --dry-run

# Auto-tag from commit directives
# (Conventional Commits: feat: → minor, fix: → patch, BREAKING CHANGE: → major)
anodizer tag --dry-run   # preview what tag would be created
anodizer tag             # create + push the tag, which triggers the release workflow

# Or force a specific tag value:
anodizer tag --custom-tag v0.1.0

For CI-based releases, set GITHUB_TOKEN (or ANODIZER_GITHUB_TOKEN) as a secret — the release pipeline picks it up automatically.

Configuration

Anodizer uses .anodizer.yaml (or .anodizer.toml) in your project root. Add a schema comment for editor autocomplete:

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://tj-smith47.github.io/anodizer/schema.json

project_name: myapp

defaults:
  targets:
    - x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
    - aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
    - x86_64-apple-darwin
    - aarch64-apple-darwin
    - x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
  cross: auto

crates:
  - name: myapp
    path: "."
    tag_template: "v{{ Version }}"
    builds:
      - binary: myapp
    archives:
      - name_template: "{{ ProjectName }}-{{ Version }}-{{ Os }}-{{ Arch }}"
        files: [LICENSE, README.md]
    release:
      github:
        owner: myorg
        name: myapp
    publish:
      cargo: {}
      homebrew:
        repository:
          owner: myorg
          name: homebrew-tap

See the full configuration reference and the template reference for all available fields, variables, and filters.

Real-world adoption: cfgd

cfgd — declarative, GitOps-style machine configuration management — is anodizer's first real-world adopter and dogfoods every shipped publisher. It's a 4-crate workspace (shared lib + CLI + Kubernetes operator + CSI driver) that ships to crates.io (dependency-aware ordering), GitHub Releases, Homebrew, Scoop, Chocolatey, Winget, the Snap Store, Krew, GHCR, and via cargo binstall — all from one .anodizer.yaml and one tag push.

A condensed slice of cfgd's .anodizer.yaml:

workspaces:
  - name: cfgd-core
    crates:
      - name: cfgd-core
        tag_template: "core-v{{ Version }}"
        version_sync: { enabled: true, mode: cargo }

  - name: cfgd
    crates:
      - name: cfgd
        depends_on: [cfgd-core]
        version_sync: { enabled: true, mode: cargo }
        universal_binaries:
          - name_template: "{{ ProjectName }}"
            replace: false
        binstall:
          enabled: true   # pkg-url + per-target overrides derived from archive.name_template
  # ... cfgd-operator, cfgd-csi

Every cell of What works (with proof) links to a real published cfgd artifact for the feature in question — that's the verification surface.

GitHub Actions

Anodizer ships a first-party action, tj-smith47/anodizer-action, which is what this repo dogfoods in its own release.yml:

name: Release

on:
  push:
    tags: ["v*"]

permissions:
  contents: write

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0

      - uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable

      - name: Release
        uses: tj-smith47/anodizer-action@v1
        with:
          version: latest        # accepts `latest`, `nightly`, or an exact tag (e.g. `v0.5.0`). Pin in production.
          auto-install: true     # auto-detect nfpm/makeself/snapcraft/cosign/etc from .anodizer.yaml
          args: release --clean
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

For split/merge fan-out, GPG key import, registry login, and per-platform variants, see anodizer-action and the live .github/workflows/release.yml in this repo.

CLI Reference

anodizer release       Full release pipeline (--snapshot, --dry-run, --split/--merge, --publish-only, --rollback-only)
anodizer tag           Auto-tag from commit directives
anodizer tag rollback  Delete anodize-managed tags at a SHA and revert the bump commit
anodizer check         Validate configuration + run determinism harness
anodizer preflight     Verify the environment can run the configured release (tools, secrets, key material)
anodizer init          Generate starter .anodizer.yaml
anodizer healthcheck   Probe external tools (nfpm, cosign, ...)

Failure handling is in-process: a failed anodizer release executes the release.on_failure policy itself (rollback by default — delete the tag, revert the bump — auto-degrading to hold once a one-way-door publisher like crates.io has landed), so release workflows need no if: failure() recovery steps. anodizer tag rollback "$GITHUB_SHA" is the manual recovery command for killed or held runs. See Release resilience for the flag matrix and recovery flows.

Full reference: anodizer --help or the docs site.

Documentation

Full documentation is available at tj-smith47.github.io/anodizer.

Operator guides:

• Release resilience guide - three-group publisher dispatch, Submitter gate, rollback, replay-from-run
• Determinism guide - byte-stability contract, anodizer check determinism harness, runtime allow-list

License

MIT