kelos-dev / kelos-dev/kelos

CLI UX: 'axon version' should display meaningful version information

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actor/kelos generated-by-kelos kelos/needs-input needs-kind needs-priority triage-accepted
Dominant language
Go
Stars
331
Forks
40
Avg merge
1d 21h
Merged PRs (30d)
70

Description

Problem

As a new user trying out Axon, running axon version only displays "latest", which is not helpful for:

  1. Troubleshooting - Users can't tell maintainers what version they're running
  2. Upgrade decisions - Can't determine if they need to upgrade
  3. Verification - Can't verify their installation worked correctly

Current output:

$ axon version
latest

Expected Behavior

The version command should display meaningful information such as:

axon version v0.1.0
Git commit: f4b2c1d
Built: 2026-02-09T12:00:00Z
Go version: go1.23.4

Or at minimum:

axon v0.1.0 (f4b2c1d)

Context

Most CLI tools (kubectl, gh, docker, etc.) provide detailed version information including:

  • Semantic version or release tag
  • Git commit hash
  • Build date
  • Platform/architecture
  • Go version (for Go tools)

This is especially important for open-source projects where users may be building from source or using different distribution channels.

Suggested Implementation

Use build-time flags to inject version information:

go build -ldflags "-X main.version=${VERSION} -X main.commit=${GIT_COMMIT} -X main.date=${BUILD_DATE}"

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the implementation of the axon version command and the Go build invocation that can receive -ldflags. Confirm how the current latest output is produced, then make the command report available version metadata such as the release version and commit; done means axon version no longer shows only latest.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
build-system, cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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