In 4.4, the version output changed from being plain text to being a mix of plain text and json.

4.2 --version output:

serene% /usr/local/m/versions/4.2/mongo --version

MongoDB shell version v4.2.8

git version: 43d25964249164d76d5e04dd6cf38f6111e21f5f

OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1g  21 Apr 2020

allocator: tcmalloc

modules: enterprise 

build environment:

    distmod: debian10

    distarch: x86_64

    target_arch: x86_64

4.4 --version output:

serene% ~me/debs/mongo/devuan/4.4/mongo --version      

MongoDB shell version v4.4.0-rc12

Build Info: {

    "version": "4.4.0-rc12",

    "gitVersion": "4b96db94125b5e0ca1da0c91f09a5fca8c94d9ab",

    "openSSLVersion": "OpenSSL 1.1.1g  21 Apr 2020",

    "modules": [

        "enterprise"

    ],

    "allocator": "tcmalloc",

    "environment": {

        "distarch": "x86_64",

        "target_arch": "x86_64"

    }

}

While the 4.4 output can be read by humans and can, kind of, be read by machines, I think it is suboptimal for the following reasons:

• Humans do not benefit from additional punctuation in json.
• The format as far as I can tell is not actually documented. https://jira.mongodb.org/secure/EditComment!default.jspa?id=1403622&commentId=3274400 suggests the following to parse it:

> mongo --version | sed -E 's/Build Info: |MongoDB shell.*//'

Since the format is not documented, there is no guarantee this sed command will work in future versions.

Additionally, having to perform text transforms on output is awkward.

• The output is not directly machine-readable (i.e. the output of `mongo --version` cannot be simply piped to a json parser).

I believe a better implementation would be to provide two version outputs:

• One in plain text, essentially same as 4.2 output.
• One in json, i.e. the current 4.4 output starting with the first {.

The second output could be obtained via, say, --json-version switch.