🚀 go-pugleaf

I am trying to use the -D argument to pass a string constant into my code at
compile time.  I invoke gcc with the following line:
gcc -E -DVERSION=test -o incl.list incl.c

What I would to have in my code is
  char version = "test";

I can get test into my c code, but cannot figure out how to use as a string.

Following is some test code and output which have used to try to generate what
I want.
int
main()
{
 #define vers VERSION
 #define _string(x) #x
 #define echo(x) x
 #define echo2(x) "##x"
 #define echo3(x) "x"
 #define echo4(x) "##x##"
 _string(vers);
 echo(vers);
 echo(VERSION);
 echo2(vers);
 echo2(VERSION);
 echo3(vers);
 echo3(VERSION);
 echo4(VERSION);
 vers;
 "vers";
}


preprocessor output from above
# 1 "incl.c"
int
main()
{






 "vers" ;
 test   ;
 test  ;
 "##x" ;
 "##x" ;
 "x" ;
 "x" ;
 "##x##" ;
 test  ;
 "vers";
}