Disable VCS stamping

[oakrizan]

While migrating beats repo faced an error during packaging.
To fix issue it's required to disable vcs stamping.

[mergify]

This pull request does not have a backport label. Could you fix it @oakrizan? 🙏
To fixup this pull request, you need to add the backport labels for the needed
branches, such as:

• backport-v./d./d is the label to automatically backport to the 1./d branch. /d is the digit
  NOTE: backport-skip has been added to this pull request.

[v1v]

wait, IIUC, the issue is in beats if that's the case, aren't these changes needed to be included in the consumer instead?

[v1v]

For instance, the elastic-agent team did something similar and they are also consumers of this library (golang-crossbuild):

• elastic/elastic-agent@cc81e4b

[dliappis]

For instance, the elastic-agent team did something similar and they are also consumers of this library (golang-crossbuild):

• elastic/elastic-agent@cc81e4b

FYI @v1v the above PR you mentioned is interesting; the problem didn't get fixed by setting export GOFLAGS='-buildvcs=false' because this value gets overwritten and is hardcoded when docker is invoked here: https://github.com/elastic/beats/blob/main/dev-tools/mage/crossbuild.go#L330 (permalink).

The problem got fixed by avoiding having a nested repo (i.e. cloning beats within another cloned repo (elastic-agent): elastic/elastic-agent@cc81e4b#diff-f8bd7a8bc1f2826590a0bd7c0937871d04d15970ee75a830324888f63ce116f5R19 . A similar reproduction is described here.

vcs stamping issues seem to be rampant after go 1.18.0, e.g. see golang/go#49004 and specifically the commit description in golang/go@4569fe6
See also https://github.com/elastic/endgame-gameover/commit/a9d2c6ca12e81eace3802e39bbd933d4cac7cbc3

cc @alexsapran

[v1v]

In addition, #232 might be relevant too

[v1v]

This will not fix the issue; those flags are only relevant for building the Golang Crossbuild in Buildkite. It will also not fix the problem in the consumers.

Can you point out where this is failing in the Buildkite builds for the Golang Crossbuild?

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 5d3180c

History

• 💚 Build #258 succeeded b0b60ca
• 💚 Build #257 succeeded 872fe33
• 💚 Build #247 succeeded d9ac9a2

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 5d3180c

History

• 💚 Build #258 succeeded b0b60ca
• 💚 Build #257 succeeded 872fe33
• 💚 Build #247 succeeded d9ac9a2

[elasticmachine]

💚 Build Succeeded

• Buildkite Build
• Commit: 5d3180c

History

• 💔 Build #357 failed b0b60ca
• 💚 Build #356 succeeded 872fe33
• 💚 Build #346 succeeded d9ac9a2

[alexsapran]

I think we should revisit this. I am not sure why this is failing on some and working on others.
Reading the official Golang docs

The go command now embeds version control information in binaries. It includes the currently checked-out revision, commit time, and a flag indicating whether edited or untracked files are present. Version control information is embedded if the go command is invoked in a directory within a Git, Mercurial, Fossil, or Bazaar repository, and the main package and its containing main module are in the same repository. This information may be omitted using the flag -buildvcs=false.

So I am not 100% sure if we should by default disable it or have it in a way that allow someone to disable it, similar to how it was tried with the elastic-agent repo.

[dliappis]

I think we should revisit this. I am not sure why this is failing on some and working on others. Reading the official Golang docs

The go command now embeds version control information in binaries. It includes the currently checked-out revision, commit time, and a flag indicating whether edited or untracked files are present. Version control information is embedded if the go command is invoked in a directory within a Git, Mercurial, Fossil, or Bazaar repository, and the main package and its containing main module are in the same repository. This information may be omitted using the flag -buildvcs=false.

So I am not 100% sure if we should by default disable it or have it in a way that allow someone to disable it, similar to how it was tried with the elastic-agent repo.

I spent a little more time during the weekend and with a simpler reproducer, I have able to reliable hit the error which goes away when setting -buildvcs=false in the GOFLAGS of the docker image as shown in this commit.

I also did many reruns of with buildvcs disabled and there was no flakiness.