Versioning utilities

One of the most difficult tasks is to automatically and uniquely version command line utilities, especially when using a CI/CD system. This section presents a technique that uses a GitHub value to version a command line utility on your local machine. You can apply the same technique to GitLab—just search for the available GitLab variables and values and choose one that fits your needs.

This technique is used by both the docker and kubectl utilities, among others:

$ docker version
Client:
 Version:           24.0.5
 API version:       1.43
 Go version:        go1.20.6
 Git commit:        ced0996600
 Built:             Wed Jul 26 21:44:58 2023
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
Server:
 Engine:
  Version:          24.0.5
  API version:      1.43 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.20.6
  Git commit:       a61e2b4c9c
  Built:            Wed Jul 26 21:44:58 2023
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:    ...