GoVersionInfo

May 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

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Microsoft Windows File Properties/Version Info and Icon Resource Generator for the Go Language

Package creates a syso file which contains Microsoft Windows Version Information and an optional icon. When you run "go build", Go will embed the version information and an optional icon and an optional manifest in the executable. Go will automatically use the syso file if it's in the same directory as the main() function.

Example of the file properties you can set using this package:

Image of File Properties

Usage

To install, run the following command:

go install github.com/josephspurrier/goversioninfo/cmd/goversioninfo@latest

Copy testdata/resource/versioninfo.json into your working directory and then modify the file with your own settings.

Add a similar text to the top of your Go source code (-icon and -manifest are optional, but can also be specified in the versioninfo.json file):

//go:generate goversioninfo -icon=testdata/resource/icon.ico -manifest=testdata/resource/goversioninfo.exe.manifest

Run the Go commands in this order so goversioninfo will create a file called resource.syso in the same directory as the Go source code.

go generate
go build

Architecture Detection

The -64 and -arm flags default based on the GOARCH environment variable (falling back to the host architecture if GOARCH is not set). This means go generate will automatically produce a resource file matching the target architecture without needing to pass -64 or -arm explicitly. You can still override the defaults by passing the flags on the command line.

Version Synchronization

The FixedFileInfo and StringFileInfo sections of the JSON config both contain FileVersion and ProductVersion fields. FixedFileInfo stores them as structured numeric components (Major, Minor, Patch, Build), while StringFileInfo stores them as free-form strings.

When Build() is called, missing version fields are automatically filled in:

  • If FixedFileInfo has a version set but the corresponding StringFileInfo string is empty, the string is generated (e.g., "2.0.0.0").
  • If StringFileInfo has a parseable version string but the corresponding FixedFileInfo fields are all zero, the struct is populated from the string.
  • If both are already set, neither is modified — but a warning is logged if the numeric components do not match.
  • If a StringFileInfo version string cannot be parsed as a version number (e.g., x.y.z or x.y.z.w), a warning is logged.

This means you only need to specify version information in one place. For example, providing just FixedFileInfo is sufficient:

{
  "FixedFileInfo": {
    "FileVersion": {
      "Major": 2,
      "Minor": 0,
      "Patch": 0,
      "Build": 0
    },
    "ProductVersion": {
      "Major": 2,
      "Minor": 0,
      "Patch": 0,
      "Build": 0
    }
  }
}

Application Icon (Window Title Bar)

By default, Windows uses the system default icon for the window title bar. To set a custom window icon, goversioninfo embeds an icon resource with the IDI_APPLICATION resource ID (32512). This is the icon that Win32 applications load via LoadIcon(hInstance, IDI_APPLICATION).

When IconPath is set and ApplicationIconPath is not, the application icon defaults to the same file as IconPath. To use a different icon for the window title bar, set ApplicationIconPath explicitly:

{
    "IconPath": "icons/main.ico",
    "ApplicationIconPath": "icons/small.ico"
}

You can also set it via the command line:

goversioninfo -icon=icons/main.ico -application-icon=icons/small.ico

If neither IconPath nor ApplicationIconPath is set, no application icon is embedded.

Command-Line Flags

Complete list of the flags for goversioninfo:

  -charset=0: charset ID
  -comment="": StringFileInfo.Comments
  -company="": StringFileInfo.CompanyName
  -copyright="": StringFileInfo.LegalCopyright
  -description="": StringFileInfo.FileDescription
  -example=false: dump out an example versioninfo.json to stdout
  -file-version="": StringFileInfo.FileVersion
  -icon="": icon file name(s), separated by commas
  -application-icon="": icon file for IDI_APPLICATION (window title bar); defaults to -icon if unset
  -internal-name="": StringFileInfo.InternalName
  -manifest="": manifest file name
  -skip-versioninfo=false: skip version info reading on true, allows setting just icon
  -o="resource.syso": output file name
  -gofile="": Go output file name (optional) - generates a Go file to access version information internally
  -gofilepackage="main": Go output package name (optional, requires parameter: 'gofile')
  -platform-specific=false: output i386 and amd64 named resource.syso, ignores -o
  -original-name="": StringFileInfo.OriginalFilename
  -private-build="": StringFileInfo.PrivateBuild
  -product-name="": StringFileInfo.ProductName
  -product-version="": StringFileInfo.ProductVersion
  -special-build="": StringFileInfo.SpecialBuild
  -trademark="": StringFileInfo.LegalTrademarks
  -translation=0: translation ID
  -64:false: generate 64-bit binaries on true
  -arm:false: generate ARM binaries on true
  -ver-major=-1: FileVersion.Major
  -ver-minor=-1: FileVersion.Minor
  -ver-patch=-1: FileVersion.Patch
  -ver-build=-1: FileVersion.Build
  -product-ver-major=-1: ProductVersion.Major
  -product-ver-minor=-1: ProductVersion.Minor
  -product-ver-patch=-1: ProductVersion.Patch
  -product-ver-build=-1: ProductVersion.Build

You can look over the Microsoft Resource Information: VERSIONINFO resource

You can look through the Microsoft Version Information structures: Version Information Structures

PowerShell Differences

In PowerShell, the version components are named differently than the fields in the versioninfo.json file:

PowerShell:          versioninfo.json:
-----------          -----------------
FileMajorPart      = FileVersion.Major
FileMinorPart      = FileVersion.Minor
FileBuildPart      = FileVersion.Patch
FilePrivatePart    = FileVersion.Build
ProductMajorPart   = ProductVersion.Major
ProductMinorPart   = ProductVersion.Minor
ProductBuildPart   = ProductVersion.Patch
ProductPrivatePart = ProductVersion.Build

If you find any other differences, let me know.

Unicode Characters in versioninfo.json

The versioninfo.json file must be saved as UTF-8. If your editor saves it in a different encoding (such as Windows-1252, which is the default for some Windows text editors), non-ASCII characters like the copyright symbol © will appear as ? or � in the compiled executable's file properties.

This happens because Go reads the JSON file as UTF-8. A © saved as Windows-1252 is a single byte (0xA9), which is invalid UTF-8. Go replaces invalid bytes with the Unicode replacement character (U+FFFD), which Windows then displays as ?.

To fix this, either:

  • Save versioninfo.json as UTF-8 in your text editor, or
  • Use the JSON escape sequence © instead of the literal © character

Alternatives to this Tool

You can also use windres to create the syso file. The windres executable is available in either MinGW or tdm-gcc.

Below is a sample batch file you can use to create a .syso file from a .rc file. There are sample .rc files in the testdata/rc folder.

@ECHO OFF

SET PATH=C:\TDM-GCC-64\bin;%PATH%
REM SET PATH=C:\mingw64\bin;%PATH%

windres -i testdata/rc/versioninfo.rc -O coff -o versioninfo.syso

PAUSE

The information on how to create a .rc file is available here. You can use the testdata/rc/versioninfo.rc file to create a .syso file that contains version info, icon, and manifest.

Issues

The majority of the code for the creation of the syso file is from this package: https://github.com/akavel/rsrc

There is an issue with adding the icon resource that prevents your application from being compressed or modified with a resource editor. Please use with caution.

Major Contributions

Thanks to Tamás Gulácsi for his superb code additions, refactoring, and optimization to make this a solid package.

Thanks to Mateusz Czaplinski for his embedded binary resource package with icon and manifest functionality.