Currently, we are running this command in the extension to check for version:

./codeql version -v --log-to-stderr --format=terse

What version was this subcommand introduced in? And before that, the --version flag was available.

A potential solution is that we can try the original command and if that fails, we can run codeql --version and parse the results differently.

Another possibility is that we assume that there are no external users still using this old version and we ignore this problem.

@donokuda Can you post here what version you have?

@hmakholm Are you planning on removing the --version flag?

Can you post here what version you have?

Here's what codeql --version returns for me

➜ ./codeql --version
CodeQL command-line toolchain.
Version: unnumbered early alpha/beta.
Copyright (C) 2019 GitHub, Inc.
Unpacked in: /Users/donokuda/Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/github.vscode-codeql/distribution/codeql
   Analysis results depend critically on separately distributed query and
   extractor modules. To list modules that are visible to the toolchain,
   use 'codeql resolve qlpacks' and 'codeql resolve list-languages'.

codeql version -v --log-to-stderr --format=terse

should work right from the earliest public release. The codeql version subcommand was introduced in https://git.semmle.com/Semmle/code/pull/35091 before the public launch at GHU 2019.

Thanks, both of you. I'd guess that we will have no external users with this version. And since the first public release had the subcommand, I don't think this is a problem we need to deal with.

Reopening because I will put in a fix here. If we fail to run the version command for any reason, then we will return 0.0.0 for the version number in order to force an update. If this happens, presumably, the cli is really old or it is corrupted.