Installing Hugo 0.120.3 on macOS (Apple Silicon)

22 Feb 2025

My Hugo site stopped running locally, because Hugo and the theme I am using (Academic CV) switched dramatically from Bootstrap to Tailwind CSS, as well as a bunch of other behaviour changes. I don't have the time to update everything. But Homebrew had already updated Hugo to the latest version. And there's no option to simply tap an older version in Homebrew.

This guide documents the process of manually installing Hugo 0.120.3 on a Mac with an M1/M2/M3 processor and ensuring Homebrew does not update it. I thought I'd share it for anyone else with this problem. The usual disclaimers - you do this at your own risk, etc. etc.

0. Install the latest version using Homebrew

I didn't need this step, because I'd previously installed Hugo with Homebrew. But if you haven't: brew install hugo

1. Clone the Hugo Repository

Create a temporary directory and clone the Hugo source code for version 0.120.3:

mkdir -p ~/tmp/hugo-aargh
cd ~/tmp/hugo-aargh
git clone --branch v0.120.3 --depth 1 https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo.git
cd hugo

2. Set Build Metadata

Retrieve the commit hash and current build date:

COMMIT_HASH=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
BUILD_DATE=$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")

3. Compile Hugo with Extended Features

Build Hugo with the necessary flags:

go build -tags extended -ldflags "-s -w \
  -X github.com/gohugoio/hugo/common/hugo.commitHash=${COMMIT_HASH} \
  -X github.com/gohugoio/hugo/common/hugo.buildDate=${BUILD_DATE} \
  -X github.com/gohugoio/hugo/common/hugo.vendorInfo=brew" \
  -o hugo

4. Install the Compiled Binary

Move the compiled binary to /opt/homebrew/bin/ and make it executable:

sudo mv hugo /opt/homebrew/bin/hugo
chmod +x /opt/homebrew/bin/hugo

5. Verify the Installation

Check that Hugo is installed and running the correct version:

hugo version

6. Prevent Homebrew from Updating Hugo

To ensure that Homebrew does not automatically update Hugo, pin the package:

brew pin hugo

You can confirm that hugo is pinned by running:

brew list --pinned

Notes

This method manually compiles Hugo instead of using brew install to avoid unwanted automatic updates.
If a future update is needed, you can unpin it with:
```
brew unpin hugo
```
To remove the temporary build directory:
```
rm -rf ~/tmp/hugo-aargh
```

Hugo 0.120.3 is now installed and locked from Homebrew updates! 🚀

peterwake/install_hugo_0.120.3.md