Go Application Versioning

External

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/using-ldflags-to-set-version-information-for-go-applications

Internal

• Go Engineering

Write an Authoritative Source of Version Information Script

The version information for a build should be generate in just one place. A shell script is probably the most versatile. Write a script that generate the version label at stdout and name it ${PROJECT_DIR}/scripts/get-version.sh.

Pass the Version Information as a Linker Argument

version = $(shell $(CURDIR)/scripts/get-version.sh)

...

build: ...
	@go build -ldflags="-X 'example.com/myapp/internal/version.Version=$(version)'" ...

The go build command passes dynamically-generated version information to the linker. For more details, see:

go build -ldflags

Write a Dedicated version Package

The version will contain the Version variable whose value will be replaced at linking time with the actual build value:

package version

var Version = "will be updated during linking"

The use of a variable is mandatory. If declared as constant, the value won't be replaced during linking.

func displayVersion() {
	fmt.Printf("%v\n", version.Version)
}