[Enhancement]: Built-in build metadata support (git commit, branch) for self-hosted deployments

[MieszkoMakuch]

What features would you like to see added?

Support for passing build metadata (git commit SHA, branch name) into the Docker image at build time, so self-hosted deployments can identify which exact version is running.

Flow

┌─────────────┐      ┌──────────────┐      ┌─────────────┐      ┌──────────┐
│  CI/CD      │      │  Dockerfile  │      │  Vite Build │      │    UI    │
│             │─────▶│              │─────▶│             │─────▶│          │
│ --build-arg │      │ ARG → ENV    │      │ VITE_* vars │      │ footer / │
│ VITE_BUILD_ │      │ during       │      │ baked into  │      │ settings │
│ COMMIT=abc  │      │ npm run      │      │ JS bundle   │      │ /version │
│ BRANCH=main │      │ frontend     │      │ at compile  │      │ endpoint │
└─────────────┘      └──────────────┘      └─────────────┘      └──────────┘

More details

Use case: Self-hosted instances across multiple environments (dev/staging/prod). After deployment, operators need to verify which commit is actually running — for debugging, release verification, etc.

CUSTOM_FOOTER partially covers this, but it's a runtime env var decoupled from the image — if someone swaps the image without updating the var, the info becomes misleading.

Build-time injection solves this: metadata is compiled into the JS bundle, so every image is self-describing.

Prior art: GitLab, Grafana, Mattermost all expose build metadata in self-hosted instances.

Suggested change: Add optional ARGs to the Dockerfile (similar to existing NODE_MAX_OLD_SPACE_SIZE) that Vite picks up via its VITE_ env prefix. When args are not provided — no change in behavior.

Which components are impacted?

General, UI