Homebrew and Nix

gwm ships through several managed channels in addition to cargo install: Homebrew, Nix, cargo binstall, and the raw prebuilt archives. Pick whichever fits your environment. End-user install instructions live in Getting started → Install; this page covers the packaging surface for contributors, maintainers, and downstream packagers.

Homebrew tap

Tap and formula:

• Tap: kbrdn1/homebrew-tap
• Formula: Formula/gwm.rb
• Canonical source: packaging/homebrew/gwm.rb.template in this repo

The tap is refreshed automatically on every stable release by the homebrew-tap-update job in release.yml. The job:

1. Reads the freshly-tagged version (e.g. v0.6.0).
2. Filters out pre-release tags (-rc.N, -alpha.N, -beta.N) so brew install gwm always resolves to a stable build. Pre-releases are still published to the GitHub releases page; they just don’t update the tap.
3. Substitutes version, SHA, and archive URLs into the template.
4. Opens a PR (or pushes directly, depending on the tap’s branch protection) against kbrdn1/homebrew-tap.

End-user install:

brew tap kbrdn1/tap
brew install gwm

Nix flake

flake.nix lives at the repo root. The package is built via rustPlatform.buildRustPackage and pins Cargo.lock; git2’s vendored-libgit2 feature keeps the closure free of system libgit2.

End-user install:

# one-shot run, no clone
nix run github:kbrdn1/gwm-cli -- list

# install into your profile
nix profile install github:kbrdn1/gwm-cli

# in a NixOS / nix-darwin config, via the overlay
nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.gwm.overlays.default ];
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.gwm ];

The flake exports:

• packages.<system>.gwm: the executable
• packages.<system>.default: alias for gwm
• apps.<system>.default: nix run entry point
• overlays.default: for downstream NixOS / nix-darwin configs
• devShells.<system>.default: pinned Rust toolchain + rust-analyzer, clippy, rustfmt, cargo-watch, cargo-edit, and the libgit2 build deps. Used by Development → Testing.

Test the flake locally before pushing changes:

nix flake check
nix build .#gwm
./result/bin/gwm --version

Cargo-binstall

Added by #27 / #173. A [package.metadata.binstall] block in Cargo.toml lets cargo-binstall pull the prebuilt release archive instead of compiling from source:

cargo binstall gwm-cli

cargo binstall resolves the archive (gwm-v{version}-{target}.tar.gz, .zip on Windows) straight from the matching GitHub Release and unpacks the binary, with no Rust toolchain invocation and no libgit2 compile at install time, in contrast to cargo install gwm-cli which builds the crate locally.

The metadata pins the archive naming to the release.yml matrix output; tests/binstall_metadata_tests.rs guards against artefact-naming drift so a renamed asset can’t silently break cargo binstall.

See Getting started → Install for the end-user comparison of cargo binstall vs cargo install vs the prebuilt archives.

Prebuilt binaries

Releases at https://github.com/kbrdn1/gwm-cli/releases ship signed binaries with .sha256 sidecars for:

• Linux (x86_64, aarch64)
• macOS (Intel, Apple Silicon)
• Windows (x86_64)

The build matrix is the release workflow in .github/workflows/release.yml. Each tag-push triggers a parallel build across the matrix, with .sha256 sidecars computed in the same job. Release notes are sourced from the per-version changelog (changelogs/<version>.md), not from the root CHANGELOG.md, which only holds the current [Unreleased] section + index.

The release pipeline at a glance

git tag v0.6.0 && git push origin v0.6.0
         ↓
.github/workflows/release.yml
    ├─ build matrix (5 targets)         → release assets + .sha256
    ├─ pre-release.yml gate              → skip on -rc / -alpha / -beta
    └─ homebrew-tap-update job           → only on stable tags
         ↓
github.com/kbrdn1/gwm-cli/releases   ← binaries
github.com/kbrdn1/homebrew-tap        ← formula bump PR

Related

• Getting started → Install: end-user install for the four channels
• Development → Contributing: branch / commit / PR conventions and the CHANGELOG split rules