Version Info in Go Binaries

Here's the proper way to add version information to Go binaries(as opossed to Version Your Go Binaries):

import "runtime/debug"

func getSetting(settings []debug.BuildSetting, k string) string {
	for _, v := range settings {
		if v.Key == k {
			return v.Value
		}
	}
	return ""
}

func printVersionInfo() {
	bi, ok := debug.ReadBuildInfo()
	if !ok {
		panic("failed to read build info")
	}
	fmt.Println(bi.Main.Version)
	fmt.Println(bi.GoVersion)
	fmt.Println(getSetting(bi.Settings, "GOOS"))
	fmt.Println(getSetting(bi.Settings, "GOARCH"))
	fmt.Println(getSetting(bi.Settings, "vcs.revision"))
	fmt.Println(getSetting(bi.Settings, "vcs.time"))
	return nil
}

This is using the runtime/debug.ReadBuildInfo function to get the build information from the running binary and prints the:

• module version
• Go version used to build the binary
• OS and CPU architecture of the binary
• commit ID
• UTC time when the commit was made

Here's a sample output:

(devel)
go1.19
linux
amd64
78647c22ecd90761726ff4eacd8a9ff2e0a8ac51
2022-12-24T17:20:56Z

(devel) will be replaced with the tag name if the binary was built from a tagged commit(e.g. go install my-package@v1.2.3)

With this approach, you don't need to do anything besides calling ReadBuildInfo and printing what you need.

This is a simpler and cleaner approach than the alternatives, like setting variables at build time with -X flag of -ldflags or using embed package.