goreleaser/goreleaser · error

nix.license is invalid

Error message

nix.license is invalid

What it means

The nix pipe validates nix.license against a known SPDX license list in Default. If a non-empty nix.license value is not in slices.Contains(validLicenses, ...), it wraps errInvalidLicense with the offending value (internal/pipe/nix/nix.go:53, checked at nix.go:89). It fails during the default/build phase, before publishing.

Source

Thrown at internal/pipe/nix/nix.go:53

// ErrMultipleArchivesSamePlatform happens when the config yields multiple
// archives for the same platform.
var ErrMultipleArchivesSamePlatform = errors.New("one nixpkg can handle only one archive of each OS/Arch combination")

type errNoArchivesFound struct {
	goamd64 string
	ids     []string
}

func (e errNoArchivesFound) Error() string {
	return fmt.Sprintf("no archives found matching goos=[darwin linux] goarch=[amd64 arm arm64 386] goarm=[6 7] goamd64=%s ids=%v", e.goamd64, e.ids)
}

var (
	errNoRepoName     = pipe.Skip("repository name is not set")
	errSkipUpload     = pipe.Skip("nix.skip_upload is set")
	errSkipUploadAuto = pipe.Skip("nix.skip_upload is set to 'auto', and current version is a pre-release")
	errInvalidLicense = errors.New("nix.license is invalid")
)

// New returns a pipe to be used in the publish phase.
func New() Pipe {
	return Pipe{realHasher}
}

type Pipe struct {
	hasher fileHasher
}

func (Pipe) String() string                           { return "nixpkgs" }
func (Pipe) ContinueOnError() bool                    { return true }
func (Pipe) Dependencies(_ *context.Context) []string { return []string{nixHashBin} }

func (p Pipe) Skip(ctx *context.Context) bool {
	return skips.Any(ctx, skips.Nix) || len(ctx.Config.Nix) == 0
}

View on GitHub (pinned to f5edd73956)

Solutions

1. Set nix.license to an exact valid identifier from goreleaser's list (e.g. 'mit', 'apache-2.0') — check the list in internal/pipe/nix/nix.go (validLicenses).
2. Remove nix.license if it can't be mapped; empty values are allowed.
3. Match the identifier casing/format used in your Cargo.toml/pyproject equivalent, since goreleaser mirrors those SPDX ids strictly.

Example fix

// before
nix:
  license: MIT OR Apache-2.0
// after
nix:
  license: mit

func validNixLicense(lic string) error {
    if lic == "" { return nil }
    switch strings.ToLower(lic) {
    case "mit", "apache-2.0", "bsd-3-clause", "bsd-2-clause", "mpl-2.0", "gpl-3.0-only":
        return nil
    }
    return fmt.Errorf("license %q not in goreleaser validLicenses", lic)
}

When it happens

Trigger: Setting nix.license to a string not on goreleaser's validLicenses list — e.g. a full SPDX expression like 'MIT OR Apache-2.0', a misspelled identifier like 'APACHE-2.0' instead of 'Apache-2.0', or a custom proprietary string.

Common situations: Copying a license from Cargo/package.json with different casing or formatting; using SPDX compound expressions unsupported by the list; typos in license identifiers when migrating to the nix pipe.

Related errors

• 'server' is a required config key
• 'category_id' is a required config key
• no tags provided
• no app_id provided for flatpak
• no runtime provided for flatpak

AI-assisted analysis of goreleaser/goreleaser@f5edd73956 (2026-09-05). Data as JSON: /api/errors/932a2564345f18e2. Report an issue: GitHub.