Possibility to set the package version dynamically

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Maintainer notes

• For one approach to tracking a marketing version, see https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/6583#issuecomment-1702417194
  • Version field is now optional (#12786)
• For a CLI to edit package.version, see https://github.com/killercup/cargo-edit
• For dynamic version design considerations, see https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/6583#issuecomment-1131619829
  • https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/6583#issuecomment-1785493031

Hello

I'm building a rust application using internal teamcity CI job. I want the build number to be part of the version of the binary (so eg. ./app --version knows from which build it came).

The only way I found so far is to let the build first edit the Cargo.toml (sed -i -e 's/^version = .*/version = "%build.version%"/' Cargo.toml), which seems ugly and fragile.

It would be great if I could somehow override the version from Cargo.toml through the command line ‒ either as a parameter or an environment variable.

Would something like that make sense? Are there plans to support it?

Start with the issue's dynamic-version design considerations and the linked pull request #14919, then review how Cargo currently handles the optional version field in Cargo.toml. Compare the proposed command-line and environment-variable approaches, and define the supported override behavior and its effect on package and binary versions.