Re: Proposal: Simplify or Remove Compiler Version Deta ils from Kernel Banner

Hi Enji,
Yes, I've tried and it can be manually disabled.
Actually, what I meant was that the RELEASE version is primarily intended for end users and its codebase is relatively stable. The boot messages mainly contain copyright and driver-related information, so including the Clang version there feels a bit out of place.
In fact, I've been pondering this: official FreeBSD RELEASE builds don't display the Clang version in boot messages, whereas user-compiled builds (or those built with specific compiler flags) do show it. This distinction could actually be useful—if a RELEASE build does show a Clang version, it clearly indicates the system was custom-compiled by the user.
my desire to remove it might just stem from my own OCD, but honestly, whether it's displayed or not doesn't really have any practical negative impact on me. 😄
Thanks again to you and Dmitry for your explanations!
Thanks & Best Regards
👨‍💻 Haowu Ge (葛豪武) | 📡 BG5FRG | 🔐 0xDF09D8A8 | 🌐 www.gehaowu.com
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发件人：Enji Cooper (yaneurabeya) <[email protected]>
发送时间：2026年3月14日(周六) 00:06
收件人：Dimitry Andric<[email protected]>
抄　送："Haowu Ge(葛豪武)"<[email protected]>; "freebsd-hackers"<[email protected]>
主　题：Re: Proposal: Simplify or Remove Compiler Version Details from Kernel Banner
> On Mar 13, 2026, at 5:12 AM, Dimitry Andric <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On 13 Mar 2026, at 12:07, Haowu Ge(葛豪武) <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> Given that FreeBSD now exclusively uses Clang, the full compiler version string—particularly the part containing the GitHub URL—originally introduced to support GCC/Clang coexistence,
> 
> You can still compile FreeBSD with gcc, if you want. The compiler version string inserted into the kernel's banner is simply the first line of "$CC -v" output. The linker version string is handled similarly.
> 
> The way clang prints its version information is determined by upstream, see https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/clang/lib/Basic/Version.cpp <https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/clang/lib/Basic/Version.cpp >.
> 
> The FreeBSD version of clang uses almost the same format as upstream, except for the following differences:
> * We set CLANG_VENDOR to "FreeBSD".
> * We use the "git describe" version of the commit hash, since it is more informative than a long string of hex digits.
Hi Haowu!
 As Dimiitry noted, the compiler, git revision, etc, information has debug/diagnostic benefit to folks trying to support FreeBSD (developers, release engineers, etc).
 Is there a reason why you want to remove this information? It can be tuned via sys/conf/newvers.sh (that’s what $work does with their forked version of FreeBSD), but that interface is admittedly pretty clunky to customize.
Cheers,
-Enji