The go tool link command has a -X option (see go doc cmd/link): -X importpath.name=value Set the value of the string variable in importpath named name to value. This is only effective if the variable is declared in the source code either uninitialized or initialized to a constant string expression. -X will not work if the initializer makes a function call or refers to other variables. Note that before Go 1.5 this option took two separate arguments. In a spec file using -linkmode=external is there an equivalent option to -X above? An upstream project uses -X in their makefile to set the Version string to a value other than "unknown". One option that works for a spec file is to just use sed to set the Version string to the desired value but I was wondering if there was an equivalent linker flag that can be used that will replicate -X above. thanks Brad