# Snapshots

Sometimes we want to generate a full build of our project,
but neither want to validate anything nor upload it to anywhere.

GoReleaser supports this with the `--snapshot` flag and with the `snapshot`
customization section:

```yaml title=".goreleaser.yaml"
snapshot:
  # Allows you to change the name of the generated snapshot
  #
  # Note that some pipes require this to be semantic version compliant (nfpm,
  # for example).
  #
  # Default: `{{ .Version }}-SNAPSHOT-{{.ShortCommit}}`.
  # Templates: allowed.
  version_template: "{{ incpatch .Version }}-devel"
```

!!! warning

    Do not use the `{{.Tag}}` field in the `version_template`, as the version
    should not have the leading `v`.

## How it works

When you run GoReleaser with `--snapshot`, it will set the `Version` template
variable to the evaluation of `snapshot.name_template`. This means that if you
use `{{ .Version }}` on your name templates, you'll get the snapshot version.

You can also check if it's a snapshot build inside a template with:

```
{{ if .IsSnapshot }}something{{ else }}something else{{ end }}
```

<!-- md:templates -->

Note that the idea behind GoReleaser's snapshots is for local builds or to
validate your build on the CI pipeline. Artifacts won't be uploaded and will
only be generated into the `dist` directory.

!!! info "Maybe you are looking for something else?"

    - If just want to build the binaries, and no packages at all, check the [`goreleaser build` command](../cmd/goreleaser_build.md);
    - If you actually want to create nightly builds, check out the [nightly documentation](nightlies.md).
