error obtaining VCS status

[free-4-good]

Hey Bob, all,

I came across doWM recently and wanted to see if I could get it going on my FreeBSD 15 install.
I'm getting stuck at the install line:
go build -o ./doWM
It downloads fsnotify.... down to sys v0.13.0
Then it returns:
error obtaining VCS status: exit status 128
Use -buildvcs=false to disable VCS stamping.

What do you think might be going on here?
Cheers.

[mattkasun]

That is an indication that you are building in a non git (non vcs tobe more specific) environment, and go build is thus unable to include vcs info (commit hash, etc) into the executable. The executable will still work fine. If you run go version -m <executable name> no vcs infomation will be displayed.

[free-4-good]

@mattkasun Thank you for your reply. I'm new to building from source, so the error is new to me.

If you can bear with me these are the steps I performed, starting from my home folder:
~$ doas mkdir clone
~$ doas pkg install git go
~$ cd clone
~/clone$ git clone https://github.com/BobdaProgrammer/doWM
~/clone$ cd doWM
~/clone/doWM$ go build -o ./doWM
This is when I get the message "error obtaining VCS status...."
At what directory should I be in and what would be the executable name when running go version -m ?

Note: In my ~/clone/doWM folder I do have the 'wm' and 'exampleConfig' folders, along with the 11 files.

Thank you.

[mattkasun]

You did a clone so you should have the git info in .git subdir; not sure why you are getting that error; maybe a BSD quirk.

you would call go version -m doWM
output on my machine ==> last 4 lines are the vcs info added to the binary

go version -m doWM
doWM: go1.25.7 X:nodwarf5
	path	github.com/BobdaProgrammer/doWM
	mod	github.com/BobdaProgrammer/doWM	v1.0.3-0.20260207124737-deba7a8412d2	
	dep	github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify	v1.9.0	h1:2Ml+OJNzbYCTzsxtv8vKSFD9PbJjmhYF14k/jKC7S9k=
	dep	github.com/goccy/go-yaml	v1.18.0	h1:8W7wMFS12Pcas7KU+VVkaiCng+kG8QiFeFwzFb+rwuw=
	dep	github.com/jezek/xgb	v1.1.1	h1:bE/r8ZZtSv7l9gk6nU0mYx51aXrvnyb44892TwSaqS4=
	dep	github.com/jezek/xgbutil	v0.0.0-20250620170308-517212d66001	h1:QzytUteVo3b0NqBGPPdq3GELwd0mpqYUHatYJFWRbZ0=
	dep	github.com/mattn/go-shellwords	v1.0.12	h1:M2zGm7EW6UQJvDeQxo4T51eKPurbeFbe8WtebGE2xrk=
	dep	golang.org/x/sys	v0.13.0	h1:Af8nKPmuFypiUBjVoU9V20FiaFXOcuZI21p0ycVYYGE=
	build	-buildmode=exe
	build	-compiler=gc
	build	DefaultGODEBUG=containermaxprocs=0,decoratemappings=0,gotestjsonbuildtext=1,httpcookiemaxnum=0,multipathtcp=0,randseednop=0,rsa1024min=0,tlsmlkem=0,tlssha1=1,updatemaxprocs=0,urlmaxqueryparams=0,x509rsacrt=0,x509sha256skid=0,x509usepolicies=0
	build	CGO_ENABLED=1
	build	CGO_CFLAGS=
	build	CGO_CPPFLAGS=
	build	CGO_CXXFLAGS=
	build	CGO_LDFLAGS=
	build	GOARCH=amd64
	build	GOEXPERIMENT=nodwarf5
	build	GOOS=linux
	build	GOAMD64=v1
	build	vcs=git
	build	vcs.revision=deba7a8412d20e05bd01a480f9d591aca98d2241
	build	vcs.time=2026-02-07T12:47:37Z
	build	vcs.modified=false

[free-4-good]

I have Void running on another system and it installed without error so, like you said, it was a BSD quirk.
I have a vanilla FreeBSD 15, so after installing sudo, then visudo to enable the wheel group, then logging out and back in, I was able to successfully run:
$ sudo make install config
It created the /usr/local/bin/doWM executable, as well as the ~/.local/doWM folder and the two configuration files.
So it appears doas does not work correctly for the make install command, whereas sudo does. I learned something new today.

Thanks for the info Matt. I think I'm good going forward.