[feature] Include conan --version command in conan --help text

[meghfossa]

What is your suggestion?

Hi,

1. When I use, conan --help command, I can see help text message around conan --version. Currently, conan --version command is hidden and not documented in help message. This is so, as a user I can identify which conan version I'm using easily.
2. When I use, conan --version command, I can retrieve version, of conan.
3. When I use, conan --version json command, I can retrieve machine-readable version, of conan.
4. When I use, conan --version json command, I can retrieve machine-readable version, of python. This is so, I can easily see which python environment is being used by conan, as this is a field requested when creating a bug report.

Maybe something like this:
conan --help and conan

~/code/sbom (feat/conan-sbom) » conan  --help

Options
--version [FORMAT] Prints conan version in format. Valid format options are: text, json. By default, text is chosen. 

Consumer commands
...

Creator commands
...

Type "conan <command> -h" for help

conan --version

~/code/sbom (feat/conan-sbom) » conan  --version
Conan version 2.0.5

conan --version json

~/code/sbom (feat/conan-sbom) » conan  --version json
{
   "conan": {
       "version": "x.x.x",
    },
   "python": {
       "version": "x.x.x",
   }
}

Have you read the CONTRIBUTING guide?

• I've read the CONTRIBUTING guide

[memsharded]

Hi @meghfossa

Thanks for your suggestion.

However, I think this proposal goes a bit too far. Basically all other tools out there do not implement anything remotely similar. cmake --version, gcc --version, etc, which one is expected to be able to give a json output? None of them. Furthermore, reporting also a sub-tool like Python version in the return is also too much. The expectation for dev tools for xxx --version is outputting some plain text with the version number included plus other details, but not json output.

If you want to control the Conan version, you have the required_conan_version that you can use both in the recipes and in your global.conf (as core:required_conan_version).

[meghfossa]

However, I think this proposal goes a bit too far. Basically all other tools out there do not implement anything remotely similar. cmake --version, gcc --version, etc, which one is expected to be able to give a json output? None of them. Furthermore, reporting also a sub-tool like Python version in the return is also too much. The expectation for dev tools for xxx --version is outputting some plain text with the version number included plus other details, but not json output.

That's fair. But I do think including --version command explicitly in help text or even when you just run conan is helpful.

As a additional datapoint, I've added few popular app/pkg-manager that I've come across in past that either include additional attrs (rel dep) or provide machine-readable formatting.

>> cargo version -vv
cargo 1.64.0 (387270bc7 2022-09-16)
release: 1.64.0
commit-hash: 387270bc7f446d17869c7f208207c73231d6a252
commit-date: 2022-09-16
host: x86_64-apple-darwin
libgit2: 1.4.2 (sys:0.14.2 vendored)
libcurl: 7.87.0 (sys:0.4.55+curl-7.83.1 system ssl:(SecureTransport) LibreSSL/3.3.6)
os: Mac OS 13.3.0 [64-bit]

>> npm version
{
  npm: '9.5.0',
  node: '18.15.0',
  v8: '10.2.154.26-node.25',
  uv: '1.44.2',
  zlib: '1.2.13',
  brotli: '1.0.9',
  ares: '1.18.1',
  modules: '108',
  nghttp2: '1.51.0',
  napi: '8',
  llhttp: '6.0.10',
  uvwasi: '0.0.15',
  acorn: '8.8.2',
  simdutf: '3.1.0',
  undici: '5.20.0',
  openssl: '3.0.8+quic',
  cldr: '42.0',
  icu: '72.1',
  tz: '2022g',
  unicode: '15.0',
  ngtcp2: '0.8.1',
  nghttp3: '0.7.0'
}

>> docker version --format json
{....}

>> podman version --format json
{....}

>> gradle --version
------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 8.1.1
------------------------------------------------------------

Build time:   2023-04-21 12:31:26 UTC
Revision:     1cf537a851c635c364a4214885f8b9798051175b

Kotlin:       1.8.10
Groovy:       3.0.15
Ant:          Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.11 compiled on July 10 2021
JVM:          17.0.7 (Homebrew 17.0.7+0)
OS:           Mac OS X 13.3 aarch64
>> ...

[memsharded]

Good point.
Lets re-consider it, but not as --version, that would break the CLI design and make the implementation dirty. We can consider a conan version --format=json command.

[memsharded]

Lets go for it, lets do it

[memsharded]

Implemented in #13999 for 2.0.7