C++ :: Embedding Version Strings At Build Time

I have a set of projects. Each one builds either a static library or an executable. What I'd like to do, is at build time I want to embed a version string representing the version of the executable as well as the version of each library. These version strings will come from an external source (in my case it's based on a "git describe" call, but that's beside the point). Embedding such strings can be highly valuable for traceability. (Versions of 3rd-party libraries are not necessary.)

I'm using qmake as my build system, but this should work more or less similarly with any build tool. What I'd ideally like to do is define this process in such a self-contained way that a an absolutely minimal amount of additional code is required in order to leverage it. Preferably, nothing more than an include(version.pri) in each project's .pro file in order to collect the versions. (Retrieving them later, such as to respond to a --version command-line flag, can be done via traditional C++ methods.)

What I've done so far is to define a singleton VersionTracker class, and then tweak the build system so that "MODULE" and "VERSION" are preprocessor symbols defined at build time. I've also tweaked the build system so that a file in each project, version.cpp, is rebuilt (and regenerated if necessary) on every build regardless of changes. This source file can capture the information in the preprocessor symbols into each static library and the executable.

Now, here's the problem. How can I get the information from those version.cpp files into the VersionTracker class? I thought I could use a global object's constructor to do it, but it turns out the symbols are stripped out when the static libraries are linked so I only get the executable's version. I also found a page on stackoverflow detailing a very clever way to call a registration function at class definition time, but again the class definition appears to be stripped out if it's defined in the version.cpp file of a static library and not referenced elsewhere.

Everything I've read basically says you either need to use linker flags to prevent symbol stripping entirely, which is probably an adoption-killer for this hack, or you need to use an explicit registration function called from the executable. I'd prefer to avoid this since it is just another thing a programmer could forget to update when a library dependency is added or removed.

My last idea, which I haven't tried yet, would be to put each version.cpp into a separate static library from the one it is describing. This version-only library could be linked without symbol stripping. I don't love this concept but it might work.

I haven't yet figured out how shared libraries can be worked into this framework at all. I'll worry about that after I get static libraries working.