Golang utility to generate build information suitable for embedding in code.

Applications usually expose their version information in one way or another. Up until this point, in the context of Golang, this information was embedded into the compiled artifact via linker flags during building. The actual information was calculated via a series of (shell-) commands. Since all of this requires orchestration, this was usually done using some kind of build system (Make, Bazel, ...)

buildinfo aims to remove all that cruft, by collecting and exposing the build information in a single call.

Despite the name, it has actually no relation and very little similarity to debug.Buildinfo, which is available since Golang 1.18.

Typically buildinfo is used as Golang generator.

It can create boilerplate code for setting up the required code on its own:

buildinfo --generate golang-embed --filename version.go

This will create a file named version.go in the current working directory.

To prevent muddying your repository, it is recommended to add the generator output to the VCS ignore list. To allow your project to run and compile in a development setting, where version information is not of the utmost importance, a minimalistic version should be kept under version control nontheless. To be more precise, create two files in the directory next to your code with the go:generate instruction:

buildinfo.json

{}

buildinfo (the library) does not require any pre-processing. buildinfo (the tool) lives in the tools subdirectory. Generated files are shipped with the source code and can be recreated using the respective utilities.

cd ./tools
go install github.com/mmarkdown/mmark/v2@latest
go generate ./man

cd ./tools
go install github.com/UiP9AV6Y/buildinfo/tools/cmd/buildinfo@latest
go generate ./version

cd ./tools
go build -o buildinfo ./cmd/buildinfo

buildinfo dogfeeds its own product in ./tools/version/version.go.

• go-pogo/buildinfo
• jfrog/build-info-go
• hlandau/buildinfo

BSD 4-Clause, see LICENSE.