Hardcoded version string in /hello status response

[torben-j]

Branch/Environment/Version

• Branch/Version: v5.8.12-rc1 (observed in multiple versions)
• Environment: On-prem / Custom Docker build

Describe the bug
When building the Tyk Gateway from source using a standard go build command, the /hello endpoint reports a hardcoded default version (e.g., 5.5.0-dev) instead of the actual release version (e.g., v5.8.12-rc1).
This probably happens because the version is hard-coded in the source code or in the Swagger definitions (see swagger.yml#L287) without being dynamically injected during a standard build process.

Reproduction steps
Build a custom Docker image using the provided Dockerfile (downloading the v5.8.12-rc1 source zip).
Run the container.
Call the gateway status endpoint: curl http://:/hello.
Observe the version field in the JSON response.

Actual behavior
The response shows {"status": "pass", "version": "5.5.0-dev"} despite using the source code for a specific release tag.

Expected behavior
The /hello endpoint should return the correct version corresponding to the release tag being built (e.g., v5.8.12-rc1).

[probelabs]

Thank you @torben-junker for this detailed bug report!

Your analysis appears to be correct. The version information for the Tyk Gateway is intended to be dynamically injected during the build process using Go's linker flags (-ldflags). When building from source with a plain go build command, these flags are not applied, causing the gateway to fall back to a default, hardcoded version string.

Our investigation confirms that the default version is defined in the main.go file and is used by the /hello endpoint handler located in tyk/handlers.go.

How the Official Build Works

The official build process, defined in our Makefile, constructs the necessary -ldflags to inject the Git tag, commit hash, and build date into the final binary. You can see the relevant section here:

# tyk/Makefile:10-14
GIT_TAG := $(shell git describe --tags --always)
GIT_COMMIT := $(shell git rev-parse HEAD)
BUILD_DATE := $(shell date -u +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
LDFLAGS := -ldflags "-X main.Version=$(GIT_TAG) -X main.BuildDate=$(BUILD_DATE) -X main.GitCommit=$(GIT_COMMIT)"

To build the gateway with the correct version information, you should use the provided Makefile target:

make build

This will ensure the version details are correctly embedded in the binary.

Next Steps

We are treating this as a bug because the behavior can be confusing for users building from source. While the intended method is to use make, we can improve the experience by updating our documentation to make this clearer or by exploring ways to make the default version less misleading.

We've categorized this as a low-priority bug with simple complexity. Thank you again for bringing this to our attention!

References

• main.go:23-25 – Location of the default Version, BuildDate, and GitCommit variables.
• tyk/handlers.go:193-207 – The helloHandler that serves the /hello endpoint response.
• Makefile:10-14 – Makefile section defining the ldflags for version injection.

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