--verbose flag gets interpreted as "print version and exit"

[tcard]

My urfave/cli version is

3.6.1

Checklist

• [x] Are you running the latest v3 release? The list of releases is here.
• [x] Did you check the manual for your release? The v3 manual is here
• [x] Did you perform a search about this problem? Here's the GitHub guide about searching.

Dependency Management

• My project is using go modules.
• My project is using vendoring.
• My project is automatically downloading the latest version.

Describe the bug

After the upgrade from v2 to v3, our command starting always printing the version and exiting when passed --verbose.

We narrowed it down to the way --verbose is defined:

&cli.BoolFlag{
	Name:    "verbose",
	Aliases: []string{"v"},
},

It looks like the v alias conflicts with the default version flag.

To reproduce

• Define a boolean flag that has v as alias.
• Call the command, setting the flag to true.

See in Go playground.

Observed behavior

Command prints version and exits.

Expected behavior

One of:

• The clash on alias v is detected and the library returns an error or panics.
• The custom flag definition completely replaces default version flag.

Additional context

—

Want to fix this yourself?

I'm open to it!

Run go version and paste its output here

go version go1.25.4 darwin/arm64

Run go env and paste its output here

AR='ar'
CC='clang'
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_ENABLED='1'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CXX='clang++'
GCCGO='gccgo'
GO111MODULE=''
GOARCH='arm64'
GOARM64='v8.0'
GOAUTH='netrc'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/Users/tcard/Library/Caches/go-build'
GOCACHEPROG=''
GODEBUG=''
GOENV='/Users/tcard/Library/Application Support/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFIPS140='off'
GOFLAGS=''
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -arch arm64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -ffile-prefix-map=/var/folders/l3/h28qjr993sl4y2cgmkl06v980000gn/T/go-build751984059=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches -fno-common'
GOHOSTARCH='arm64'
GOHOSTOS='darwin'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMODCACHE='/Users/tcard/go/pkg/mod'
GOOS='darwin'
GOPATH='/Users/tcard/go'
GOPROXY='https://proxy.golang.org,direct'
GOROOT='/Users/tcard/go/pkg/mod/golang.org/[email protected]'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTELEMETRY='local'
GOTELEMETRYDIR='/Users/tcard/Library/Application Support/go/telemetry'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='auto'
GOTOOLDIR='/Users/tcard/go/pkg/mod/golang.org/[email protected]/pkg/tool/darwin_arm64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='go1.25.4'
GOWORK=''
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'

[dearchap]

@tcard Which version of v2 were you upgrading from ? I dont think this behaviour has changed from v2 to v3. Alias "v" for "version" flag has been around since beginning of v2. A quick fix for you would be to set

cli.VersionFlag.(*cli.BoolFlag).Aliases=[]

[tcard]

Hey @dearchap, we already worked around this issue and it isn't really affecting us anymore.

We upgraded from version v2.27.7.

Regardless of this is a regression or not, it seems to me this behavior should change.

[tcard]

I've added a link to a repro in the Go playground.