Stamp It! All Programs Must Report Their Version

20 hours ago

The article recounts a production incident where lack of visibility into software versions and rollouts caused delays, highlighting the need for robust versioning practices.
It proposes a three-step solution for effective versioning: stamping the VCS revision, ensuring it's plumbed through the build and packaging processes, and reporting it in various outputs (like --version flags, logs, and HTTP headers).
Software versioning should ideally include VCS revisions (e.g., Git commit hashes) for precision, similar to household appliances that have detailed identification, to aid debugging and incident response.
A case study of the i3 window manager illustrates best practices, such as the --version and --moreversion flags that provide clear, detailed version info, including release dates and Git revisions.
Go programming language is praised for its default VCS buildinfo stamping, which automatically includes Git revisions in binaries, making version identification straightforward.
Challenges with version stamping in NixOS are discussed, where VCS info can be lost due to build reproducibility measures, but a solution via the go-vcs-stamping overlay is presented.
Recommendations include implementing 'version observability' across systems to save time during incidents, with examples for different contexts like executables, services, HTTP requests, and user interfaces.

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