Standard way to embed version into python package

Question

Is there a standard way to associate version string with a python package in such way that I could do the following   import foo print foo version   I would imagine there s some way to retrieve that data without any extra hardcoding  since minor major strings are specified in setup py already  Alternative solution that I found was to have import   version   in my foo   init   py and then have   version   py generated by setup py

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I use a single  version py file as the  once cannonical place  to store version information    It provides a   version   attribute  It provides the standard metadata version  Therefore it will be detected by pkg resources or other tools that parse the package metadata  EGG-INFO and or PKG-INFO  PEP 0345   It doesn t import your package  or anything else  when building your package  which can cause problems in some situations   See the comments below about what problems this can cause   There is only one place that the version number is written down  so there is only one place to change it when the version number changes  and there is less chance of inconsistent versions    Here is how it works  the  one canonical place  to store the version number is a  py file  named   version py  which is in your Python package  for example in myniftyapp  version py  This file is a Python module  but your setup py doesn t import it   That would defeat feature 3   Instead your setup py knows that the contents of this file is very simple  something like     version      3 6 5    And so your setup py opens the file and parses it  with code like   import re VERSIONFILE  myniftyapp  version py  verstrline   open VERSIONFILE   rt   read   VSRE   r    version                          mo   re search VSRE  verstrline  re M  if mo      verstr   mo group 1  else      raise RuntimeError  Unable to find version string in  s      VERSIONFILE      Then your setup py passes that string as the value of the  version  argument to setup    thus satisfying feature 2   To satisfy feature 1  you can have your package  at run-time  not at setup time   import the  version file from myniftyapp   init   py like this   from  version import   version     Here is an example of this technique that I ve been using for years   The code in that example is a bit more complicated  but the simplified example that I wrote into this comment should be a complete implementation   Here is example code of importing the version   If you see anything wrong with this approach  please let me know

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Not directly an answer to your question  but you should consider naming it   version    not version   This is almost a quasi-standard  Many modules in the standard library use   version    and this is also used in lots of 3rd-party modules  so it s the quasi-standard   Usually    version   is a string  but sometimes it s also a float or tuple   Edit  as mentioned by S Lott  Thank you    PEP 8 says it explicitly      Module Level Dunder Names      Module level  dunders   i e  names with two leading and two trailing   underscores  such as   all      author      version    etc    should be placed after the module docstring but before any import   statements except from   future   imports    You should also make sure that the version number conforms to the format described in PEP 440  PEP 386 a previous version of this standard

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Lots of work toward uniform versioning and in support of conventions has been completed since this question was first asked  Palatable options are now detailed in the Python Packaging User Guide  Also noteworthy is that version number schemes are relatively strict in Python per PEP 440  and so keeping things sane is critical if your package will be released to the Cheese Shop    Here s a shortened breakdown of versioning options     Read the file in setup py  setuptools  and get the version  Use an external build tool  to update both   init   py as well as source control   e g  bump2version  changes or zest releaser  Set the value to a   version   global variable in a specific module  Place the value in a simple VERSION text file for both setup py and code to read  Set the value via a setup py release  and use importlib metadata to pick it up at runtime   Warning  there are pre-3 8 and post-3 8 versions   Set the value to   version   in sample   init   py and import sample in setup py  Use setuptools scm to extract versioning from source control so that it s the canonical reference  not code     NOTE that  7  might be the most modern approach  build metadata is independent of code  published by automation   Also NOTE that if setup is used for package release that a simple python3 setup py --version will report the version directly

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If you use CVS  or RCS  and want a quick solution  you can use     version       Revision  1 1    11 -2    version info     tuple  int s  for s in   version   split           Of course  the revision number will be substituted for you by CVS    This gives you a print-friendly version and a version info that you can use to check that the module you are importing has at least the expected version   import my module assert my module   version info    gt    1  1

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Many of these solutions here ignore git version tags which still means you have to track version in multiple places  bad   I approached this with the following goals    Derive all python version references from a tag in the git repo Automate git tag push and setup py upload steps with a single command that takes no inputs    How it works    From a make release command  the last tagged version in the git repo is found and incremented  The tag is pushed back to origin  The Makefile stores the version in src  version py where it will be read by setup py and also included in the release  Do not check  version py into source control  setup py command reads the new version string from package   version      Details   Makefile    remove optional  v  and trailing hash  v1 0-N-HASH  - gt   v1 0-N  git describe ver     shell git describe --tags   sed -E -e  s  v    -e  s     -    1    git tag ver          shell git describe --abbrev 0  next patch ver     shell python versionbump py --patch   call git tag ver   next minor ver     shell python versionbump py --minor   call git tag ver   next major ver     shell python versionbump py --major   call git tag ver     PHONY    MODULE   version py   MODULE   version py      echo    version        call git describe ver     gt       PHONY  release release  test lint mypy     git tag -a   call next patch ver        MAKE    MODULE   version py     python setup py check sdist upload    legacy  upload  method        twine upload dist     preferred method      git push origin master --tags   The release target always increments the 3rd version digit  but you can use the next minor ver or next major ver to increment the other digits  The commands rely on the versionbump py script that is checked into the root of the repo  versionbump py     An auto-increment tool for version strings      import sys import unittest  import click from click testing import CliRunner    type  ignore    version      0 1   MIN DIGITS   2 MAX DIGITS   3    click command    click argument  version    click option  --major    bump idx   flag value 0  help  Increment major number     click option  --minor    bump idx   flag value 1  help  Increment minor number     click option  --patch    bump idx   flag value 2  default True  help  Increment patch number    def cli version  str  bump idx  int  - gt  None         Bumps a MAJOR MINOR PATCH version string at the specified index location or  patch  digit  An     optional  v  prefix is allowed and will be included in the output if found         prefix   version 0  if version 0  isalpha   else        digits   version lower   lstrip  v   split           if len digits   gt  MAX DIGITS          click secho  ERROR  Too many digits   fg  red   err True          sys exit 1       digits    digits     0     MAX DIGITS   MAX DIGITS     Extend total digits to max      digits bump idx    str int digits bump idx     1     Increment the desired digit         Zero rightmost digits after bump position      for i in range bump idx   1  MAX DIGITS           digits i     0      digits   digits  max MIN DIGITS  bump idx   1      Trim rightmost digits      click echo prefix       join digits   nl False    if   name         main         cli      pylint  disable no-value-for-parameter   This does the heavy lifting how to process and increment the version number from git     init   py  The my module  version py file is imported into my module   init   py  Put any static install config here that you want distributed with your module   from   version import   version     author          email          setup py  The last step is to read the version info from the my module module   from setuptools import setup  find packages  pkg vars        with open   MODULE   version py   as fp      exec fp read    pkg vars   setup      version pkg vars    version                          Of course  for all of this to work you ll have to have at least one version tag in your repo to start   git tag -a v0 0 1

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pbr with bump2version This solution was derived from this article The use case - python GUI package distributed via PyInstaller  Needs to show version info  Here is the structure of the project packagex packagex  -- packagex         --   init   py         -- main py         --  version py  -- packagex spec  -- LICENSE  -- README md  --  bumpversion cfg  -- requirements txt  -- setup cfg  -- setup py   where setup py is   setup py import os  import setuptools  about      with open  quot packagex  version py quot   as f      exec f read    about   os environ  quot PBR VERSION quot     about  quot   version   quot    setuptools setup      setup requires   quot pbr quot        pbr True      version about  quot   version   quot       packagex  version py contains just   version      quot 0 0 1 quot   and packagex   init   py from   version import   version    and for  bumpversion cfg  bumpversion  current version   0 0 1 commit   False tag   False parse     P lt major gt  d      P lt minor gt  d      P lt patch gt  d    -  P lt release gt  a-z     P lt build gt  d     serialize         major   minor   patch - release  build       major   minor   patch    bumpversion part release  optional value   prod first value   dev values        dev     prod   bumpversion file packagex  version py

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Not directly an answer to your question  but you should consider naming it   version    not version   This is almost a quasi-standard  Many modules in the standard library use   version    and this is also used in lots of 3rd-party modules  so it s the quasi-standard   Usually    version   is a string  but sometimes it s also a float or tuple   Edit  as mentioned by S Lott  Thank you    PEP 8 says it explicitly      Module Level Dunder Names      Module level  dunders   i e  names with two leading and two trailing   underscores  such as   all      author      version    etc    should be placed after the module docstring but before any import   statements except from   future   imports    You should also make sure that the version number conforms to the format described in PEP 440  PEP 386 a previous version of this standard

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I use a JSON file in the package dir  This fits Zooko s requirements   Inside pkg dir pkg info json     version    0 1 0     Inside setup py   from distutils core import setup import json  with open  pkg dir pkg info json   as fp       info   json load fp   setup      version  info  version                    Inside pkg dir   init   py   import json from os path import dirname  with open dirname   file        pkg info json   as fp       info   json load fp     version      info  version     I also put other information in pkg info json  like author  I like to use JSON because I can automate management of metadata

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There doesn t seem to be a standard way to embed a version string in a python package  Most packages I ve seen use some variant of your solution  i e  eitner   Embed the version in setup py and have setup py generate a module  e g  version py  containing only version info   that s imported by your package  or The reverse  put the version info in your package itself  and import that to set the version in  setup py

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Also worth noting is that as well as   version   being a semi-std  in python so is   version info   which is a tuple  in the simple cases you can just do something like     version      1 2 3    version info     tuple   int num  for num in   version   split             and you can get the   version   string from a file  or whatever

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There doesn t seem to be a standard way to embed a version string in a python package  Most packages I ve seen use some variant of your solution  i e  eitner   Embed the version in setup py and have setup py generate a module  e g  version py  containing only version info   that s imported by your package  or The reverse  put the version info in your package itself  and import that to set the version in  setup py

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Per the deferred PEP 396  Module Version Numbers   there is a proposed way to do this  It describes  with rationale  an  admittedly optional  standard for modules to follow  Here s a snippet       3  When a module  or package  includes a version number  the version SHOULD be available in the   version   attribute       4     For modules which live inside a namespace package  the module SHOULD include the   version   attribute  The namespace package itself SHOULD NOT include its own   version   attribute       5     The   version   attribute s value SHOULD be a string

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I also saw another style    gt  gt  gt  django VERSION  1  1  0   final   0

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Not directly an answer to your question  but you should consider naming it   version    not version   This is almost a quasi-standard  Many modules in the standard library use   version    and this is also used in lots of 3rd-party modules  so it s the quasi-standard   Usually    version   is a string  but sometimes it s also a float or tuple   Edit  as mentioned by S Lott  Thank you    PEP 8 says it explicitly      Module Level Dunder Names      Module level  dunders   i e  names with two leading and two trailing   underscores  such as   all      author      version    etc    should be placed after the module docstring but before any import   statements except from   future   imports    You should also make sure that the version number conforms to the format described in PEP 440  PEP 386 a previous version of this standard

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After several hours of trying to find the simplest reliable solution  here are the parts   create a version py file INSIDE the folder of your package   mypackage      Store the version here so    1  we don t load dependencies by storing it in   init   py   2  we can import it in setup py for the same reason   3  we can import it into your module module   version      1 2 7    in setup py   exec open  mypackage version py   read    setup      name  mypackage       version   version      in the main folder init py   from  version import   version     The exec   function runs the script outside of any imports  since setup py is run before the module can be imported  You still only need to manage the version number in one file in one place  but unfortunately it is not in setup py   that s the downside  but having no import bugs is the upside

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Also worth noting is that as well as   version   being a semi-std  in python so is   version info   which is a tuple  in the simple cases you can just do something like     version      1 2 3    version info     tuple   int num  for num in   version   split             and you can get the   version   string from a file  or whatever

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Using setuptools and pbr There is not a standard way to manage version  but the standard way to manage your packages is setuptools  The best solution I ve found overall for managing version is to use setuptools with the pbr extension   This is now my standard way of managing version  Setting up your project for full packaging may be overkill for simple projects  but if you need to manage version  you are probably at the right level to just set everything up  Doing so also makes your package releasable at PyPi so everyone can download and use it with Pip  PBR moves most metadata out of the setup py tools and into a setup cfg file that is then used as a source for most metadata  which can include version  This allows the metadata to be packaged into an executable using something like pyinstaller if needed  if so  you will probably need this info   and separates the metadata from the other package management setup scripts  You can directly update the version string in setup cfg manually  and it will be pulled into the   egg-info folder when building your package releases  Your scripts can then access the version from the metadata using various methods  these processes are outlined in sections below   When using Git for VCS SCM  this setup is even better  as it will pull in a lot of the metadata from Git so that your repo can be your primary source of truth for some of the metadata  including version  authors  changelogs  etc  For version specifically  it will create a version string for the current commit based on git tags in the repo   PyPA - Packaging Python Packages with SetupTools - Tutorial PBR latest build usage documentation - How to setup an 8-line setup py and a setup cfg file with the metadata   As PBR will pull version  author  changelog and other info directly from your git repo  so some of the metadata in setup cfg can be left out and auto generated whenever a distribution is created for your package  using setup py    Get the current version in real-time setuptools will pull the latest info in real-time using setup py  python setup py --version  This will pull the latest version either from the setup cfg file  or from the git repo  based on the latest commit that was made and tags that exist in the repo  This command doesn t update the version in a distribution though    Updating the version metadata When you create a distribution with setup py  i e  py setup py sdist  for example   then all the current info will be extracted and stored in the distribution  This essentially runs the setup py --version command and then stores that version info into the package egg-info folder in a set of files that store distribution metadata   Note on process to update version meta-data  If you are not using pbr to pull version data from git  then just update your setup cfg directly with new version info  easy enough  but make sure this is a standard part of your release process   If you are using git  and you don t need to create a source or binary distribution  using python setup py sdist or one of the python setup py bdist xxx commands  the simplest way to update the git repo info into your  lt mypackage gt  egg-info metadata folder is to just run the python setup py install command  This will run all the PBR functions related to pulling metadata from the git repo and update your local  egg-info folder  install script executables for any entry-points you have defined  and other functions you can see from the output when you run this command  Note that the  egg-info folder is generally excluded from being stored in the git repo itself in standard Python  gitignore files  such as from Gitignore IO   as it can be generated from your source  If it is excluded  make sure you have a standard  quot release process quot  to get the metadata updated locally before release  and any package you upload to PyPi org or otherwise distribute must include this data to have the correct version  If you want the Git repo to contain this info  you can exclude specific files from being ignored  i e  add    egg-info PKG INFO to  gitignore     Accessing the version from a script You can access the metadata from the current build within Python scripts in the package itself  For version  for example  there are several ways to do this I have found so far     This one is a new built-in as of Python 3 8 0 should become the standard from importlib-metadata import version  v0   version  quot mypackage quot   print  v0     format v0       I don t like this one because the version method is hidden import pkg resources    part of setuptools  v1   pkg resources require  quot mypackage quot   0  version print  v1     format v1      Probably best for pre v3 8 0 - the output without  version is just a longer string with   both the package name  a space  and the version string import pkg resources    part of setuptools  v2   pkg resources get distribution  mypackage   version print  v2     format v2       This one seems to be slower  and with pyinstaller makes the exe a lot bigger from pbr version import VersionInfo  v3   VersionInfo  mypackage   release string   print  v3     format v3    You can put one of these directly in your   init   py for the package to extract the version info as follows  similar to some other answers    all              version          my package name     import pkg resources    part of setuptools    version     pkg resources get distribution  quot mypackage quot   version

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There doesn t seem to be a standard way to embed a version string in a python package  Most packages I ve seen use some variant of your solution  i e  eitner   Embed the version in setup py and have setup py generate a module  e g  version py  containing only version info   that s imported by your package  or The reverse  put the version info in your package itself  and import that to set the version in  setup py

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Per the deferred PEP 396  Module Version Numbers   there is a proposed way to do this  It describes  with rationale  an  admittedly optional  standard for modules to follow  Here s a snippet       3  When a module  or package  includes a version number  the version SHOULD be available in the   version   attribute       4     For modules which live inside a namespace package  the module SHOULD include the   version   attribute  The namespace package itself SHOULD NOT include its own   version   attribute       5     The   version   attribute s value SHOULD be a string

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Though this is probably far too late  there is a slightly simpler alternative to the previous answer     version info       1    2    3     version         join   version info       And it would be fairly simple to convert auto-incrementing portions of version numbers to a string using str      Of course  from what I ve seen  people tend to use something like the previously-mentioned version when using   version info    and as such store it as a tuple of ints  however  I don t quite see the point in doing so  as I doubt there are situations where you would perform mathematical operations such as addition and subtraction on portions of version numbers for any purpose besides curiosity or auto-incrementation  and even then  int   and str   can be used fairly easily    On the other hand  there is the possibility of someone else s code expecting a numerical tuple rather than a string tuple and thus failing    This is  of course  my own view  and I would gladly like others  input on using a numerical tuple     As shezi reminded me   lexical  comparisons of number strings do not necessarily have the same result as direct numerical comparisons  leading zeroes would be required to provide for that  So in the end  storing   version info    or whatever it would be called  as a tuple of integer values would allow for more efficient version comparisons

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Rewritten 2017-05 After 13  years of writing Python code and managing various packages  I came to the conclusion that DIY is maybe not the best approach  I started using the pbr package for dealing with versioning in my packages  If you are using git as your SCM  this will fit into your workflow like magic  saving your weeks of work  you will be surprised about how complex the issue can be   As of today  pbr is the 11th most used python package  and reaching this level didn t include any dirty tricks  It was only one thing -- fixing a common packaging problem in a very simple way  pbr can do more of the package maintenance burden  and is not limited to versioning  but it does not force you to adopt all its benefits  So to give you an idea about how it looks to adopt pbr in one commit have a look switching packaging to pbr Probably you would observed that the version is not stored at all in the repository  PBR does detect it from Git branches and tags  No need to worry about what happens when you do not have a git repository because pbr does  quot compile quot  and cache the version when you package or install the applications  so there is no runtime dependency on git  Old solution Here is the best solution I ve seen so far and it also explains why  Inside yourpackage version py    Store the version here so    1  we don t load dependencies by storing it in   init   py   2  we can import it in setup py for the same reason   3  we can import it into your module module   version      0 12   Inside yourpackage   init   py  from  version import   version    Inside setup py  exec open  yourpackage version py   read    setup              version   version             If you know another approach that seems to be better let me know

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For what it s worth  if you re using NumPy distutils  numpy distutils misc util Configuration has a make svn version py   method that embeds the revision number inside package   svn version   in the variable version

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If you use CVS  or RCS  and want a quick solution  you can use     version       Revision  1 1    11 -2    version info     tuple  int s  for s in   version   split           Of course  the revision number will be substituted for you by CVS    This gives you a print-friendly version and a version info that you can use to check that the module you are importing has at least the expected version   import my module assert my module   version info    gt    1  1

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I prefer to read the package version from installation environment  This is my src foo  version py  from pkg resources import get distribution                                                                                                                              version     get distribution  osbc   version  Makesure foo is always already installed  that s why a src  layer is required to prevent foo imported without installation  In the setup py  I use setuptools-scm to generate the version automatically

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I prefer to read the package version from installation environment  This is my src foo  version py  from pkg resources import get distribution                                                                                                                              version     get distribution  osbc   version  Makesure foo is always already installed  that s why a src  layer is required to prevent foo imported without installation  In the setup py  I use setuptools-scm to generate the version automatically

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Many of these solutions here ignore git version tags which still means you have to track version in multiple places  bad   I approached this with the following goals    Derive all python version references from a tag in the git repo Automate git tag push and setup py upload steps with a single command that takes no inputs    How it works    From a make release command  the last tagged version in the git repo is found and incremented  The tag is pushed back to origin  The Makefile stores the version in src  version py where it will be read by setup py and also included in the release  Do not check  version py into source control  setup py command reads the new version string from package   version      Details   Makefile    remove optional  v  and trailing hash  v1 0-N-HASH  - gt   v1 0-N  git describe ver     shell git describe --tags   sed -E -e  s  v    -e  s     -    1    git tag ver          shell git describe --abbrev 0  next patch ver     shell python versionbump py --patch   call git tag ver   next minor ver     shell python versionbump py --minor   call git tag ver   next major ver     shell python versionbump py --major   call git tag ver     PHONY    MODULE   version py   MODULE   version py      echo    version        call git describe ver     gt       PHONY  release release  test lint mypy     git tag -a   call next patch ver        MAKE    MODULE   version py     python setup py check sdist upload    legacy  upload  method        twine upload dist     preferred method      git push origin master --tags   The release target always increments the 3rd version digit  but you can use the next minor ver or next major ver to increment the other digits  The commands rely on the versionbump py script that is checked into the root of the repo  versionbump py     An auto-increment tool for version strings      import sys import unittest  import click from click testing import CliRunner    type  ignore    version      0 1   MIN DIGITS   2 MAX DIGITS   3    click command    click argument  version    click option  --major    bump idx   flag value 0  help  Increment major number     click option  --minor    bump idx   flag value 1  help  Increment minor number     click option  --patch    bump idx   flag value 2  default True  help  Increment patch number    def cli version  str  bump idx  int  - gt  None         Bumps a MAJOR MINOR PATCH version string at the specified index location or  patch  digit  An     optional  v  prefix is allowed and will be included in the output if found         prefix   version 0  if version 0  isalpha   else        digits   version lower   lstrip  v   split           if len digits   gt  MAX DIGITS          click secho  ERROR  Too many digits   fg  red   err True          sys exit 1       digits    digits     0     MAX DIGITS   MAX DIGITS     Extend total digits to max      digits bump idx    str int digits bump idx     1     Increment the desired digit         Zero rightmost digits after bump position      for i in range bump idx   1  MAX DIGITS           digits i     0      digits   digits  max MIN DIGITS  bump idx   1      Trim rightmost digits      click echo prefix       join digits   nl False    if   name         main         cli      pylint  disable no-value-for-parameter   This does the heavy lifting how to process and increment the version number from git     init   py  The my module  version py file is imported into my module   init   py  Put any static install config here that you want distributed with your module   from   version import   version     author          email          setup py  The last step is to read the version info from the my module module   from setuptools import setup  find packages  pkg vars        with open   MODULE   version py   as fp      exec fp read    pkg vars   setup      version pkg vars    version                          Of course  for all of this to work you ll have to have at least one version tag in your repo to start   git tag -a v0 0 1

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There doesn t seem to be a standard way to embed a version string in a python package  Most packages I ve seen use some variant of your solution  i e  eitner   Embed the version in setup py and have setup py generate a module  e g  version py  containing only version info   that s imported by your package  or The reverse  put the version info in your package itself  and import that to set the version in  setup py

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Using setuptools and pbr There is not a standard way to manage version  but the standard way to manage your packages is setuptools  The best solution I ve found overall for managing version is to use setuptools with the pbr extension   This is now my standard way of managing version  Setting up your project for full packaging may be overkill for simple projects  but if you need to manage version  you are probably at the right level to just set everything up  Doing so also makes your package releasable at PyPi so everyone can download and use it with Pip  PBR moves most metadata out of the setup py tools and into a setup cfg file that is then used as a source for most metadata  which can include version  This allows the metadata to be packaged into an executable using something like pyinstaller if needed  if so  you will probably need this info   and separates the metadata from the other package management setup scripts  You can directly update the version string in setup cfg manually  and it will be pulled into the   egg-info folder when building your package releases  Your scripts can then access the version from the metadata using various methods  these processes are outlined in sections below   When using Git for VCS SCM  this setup is even better  as it will pull in a lot of the metadata from Git so that your repo can be your primary source of truth for some of the metadata  including version  authors  changelogs  etc  For version specifically  it will create a version string for the current commit based on git tags in the repo   PyPA - Packaging Python Packages with SetupTools - Tutorial PBR latest build usage documentation - How to setup an 8-line setup py and a setup cfg file with the metadata   As PBR will pull version  author  changelog and other info directly from your git repo  so some of the metadata in setup cfg can be left out and auto generated whenever a distribution is created for your package  using setup py    Get the current version in real-time setuptools will pull the latest info in real-time using setup py  python setup py --version  This will pull the latest version either from the setup cfg file  or from the git repo  based on the latest commit that was made and tags that exist in the repo  This command doesn t update the version in a distribution though    Updating the version metadata When you create a distribution with setup py  i e  py setup py sdist  for example   then all the current info will be extracted and stored in the distribution  This essentially runs the setup py --version command and then stores that version info into the package egg-info folder in a set of files that store distribution metadata   Note on process to update version meta-data  If you are not using pbr to pull version data from git  then just update your setup cfg directly with new version info  easy enough  but make sure this is a standard part of your release process   If you are using git  and you don t need to create a source or binary distribution  using python setup py sdist or one of the python setup py bdist xxx commands  the simplest way to update the git repo info into your  lt mypackage gt  egg-info metadata folder is to just run the python setup py install command  This will run all the PBR functions related to pulling metadata from the git repo and update your local  egg-info folder  install script executables for any entry-points you have defined  and other functions you can see from the output when you run this command  Note that the  egg-info folder is generally excluded from being stored in the git repo itself in standard Python  gitignore files  such as from Gitignore IO   as it can be generated from your source  If it is excluded  make sure you have a standard  quot release process quot  to get the metadata updated locally before release  and any package you upload to PyPi org or otherwise distribute must include this data to have the correct version  If you want the Git repo to contain this info  you can exclude specific files from being ignored  i e  add    egg-info PKG INFO to  gitignore     Accessing the version from a script You can access the metadata from the current build within Python scripts in the package itself  For version  for example  there are several ways to do this I have found so far     This one is a new built-in as of Python 3 8 0 should become the standard from importlib-metadata import version  v0   version  quot mypackage quot   print  v0     format v0       I don t like this one because the version method is hidden import pkg resources    part of setuptools  v1   pkg resources require  quot mypackage quot   0  version print  v1     format v1      Probably best for pre v3 8 0 - the output without  version is just a longer string with   both the package name  a space  and the version string import pkg resources    part of setuptools  v2   pkg resources get distribution  mypackage   version print  v2     format v2       This one seems to be slower  and with pyinstaller makes the exe a lot bigger from pbr version import VersionInfo  v3   VersionInfo  mypackage   release string   print  v3     format v3    You can put one of these directly in your   init   py for the package to extract the version info as follows  similar to some other answers    all              version          my package name     import pkg resources    part of setuptools    version     pkg resources get distribution  quot mypackage quot   version

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For what it s worth  if you re using NumPy distutils  numpy distutils misc util Configuration has a make svn version py   method that embeds the revision number inside package   svn version   in the variable version

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arrow handles it in an interesting way   Now  since 2e5031b   In arrow   init   py     version      x y z    In setup py   from arrow import   version    setup      name  arrow       version   version                    Before  In arrow   init   py     version      x y z  VERSION     version     In setup py   def grep attrname       pattern   r  0  W   W            format attrname      strval    re findall pattern  file text      return strval  file text   read fpath  arrow   init   py     setup      name  arrow       version grep    version

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Lots of work toward uniform versioning and in support of conventions has been completed since this question was first asked  Palatable options are now detailed in the Python Packaging User Guide  Also noteworthy is that version number schemes are relatively strict in Python per PEP 440  and so keeping things sane is critical if your package will be released to the Cheese Shop    Here s a shortened breakdown of versioning options     Read the file in setup py  setuptools  and get the version  Use an external build tool  to update both   init   py as well as source control   e g  bump2version  changes or zest releaser  Set the value to a   version   global variable in a specific module  Place the value in a simple VERSION text file for both setup py and code to read  Set the value via a setup py release  and use importlib metadata to pick it up at runtime   Warning  there are pre-3 8 and post-3 8 versions   Set the value to   version   in sample   init   py and import sample in setup py  Use setuptools scm to extract versioning from source control so that it s the canonical reference  not code     NOTE that  7  might be the most modern approach  build metadata is independent of code  published by automation   Also NOTE that if setup is used for package release that a simple python3 setup py --version will report the version directly

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Though this is probably far too late  there is a slightly simpler alternative to the previous answer     version info       1    2    3     version         join   version info       And it would be fairly simple to convert auto-incrementing portions of version numbers to a string using str      Of course  from what I ve seen  people tend to use something like the previously-mentioned version when using   version info    and as such store it as a tuple of ints  however  I don t quite see the point in doing so  as I doubt there are situations where you would perform mathematical operations such as addition and subtraction on portions of version numbers for any purpose besides curiosity or auto-incrementation  and even then  int   and str   can be used fairly easily    On the other hand  there is the possibility of someone else s code expecting a numerical tuple rather than a string tuple and thus failing    This is  of course  my own view  and I would gladly like others  input on using a numerical tuple     As shezi reminded me   lexical  comparisons of number strings do not necessarily have the same result as direct numerical comparisons  leading zeroes would be required to provide for that  So in the end  storing   version info    or whatever it would be called  as a tuple of integer values would allow for more efficient version comparisons

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Use a version py file only with   version      lt VERSION gt  param in the file  In the setup py file import the   version   param and put it s value in the setup py file like this  version   version   Another way is to use just a setup py file with version  lt CURRENT VERSION gt  - the CURRENT VERSION is hardcoded    Since we don t want to manually change the version in the file every time we create a new tag  ready to release a new package version   we can use the following    I highly recommend bumpversion package  I ve been using it for years to bump a version   start by adding version  lt VERSION gt  to your setup py file if you don t have it already   You should use a short script like this every time you bump a version   bumpversion  patch minor major  - choose only one option git push git push --tags   Then add one file per repo called   bumpversion cfg    bumpversion  current version    lt CURRENT TAG gt  commit   True tag   True tag name    new version   bumpversion file  lt RELATIVE PATH TO SETUP FILE gt     Note     You can use   version   parameter under version py file like it was suggested in other posts and update the bumpversion file like this   bumpversion file  lt RELATIVE PATH TO VERSION FILE gt   You must git commit or git reset everything in your repo  otherwise you ll get a dirty repo error   Make sure that your virtual environment includes the package of bumpversion  without it it will not work

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Also worth noting is that as well as   version   being a semi-std  in python so is   version info   which is a tuple  in the simple cases you can just do something like     version      1 2 3    version info     tuple   int num  for num in   version   split             and you can get the   version   string from a file  or whatever

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For what it s worth  if you re using NumPy distutils  numpy distutils misc util Configuration has a make svn version py   method that embeds the revision number inside package   svn version   in the variable version

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I also saw another style    gt  gt  gt  django VERSION  1  1  0   final   0

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After several hours of trying to find the simplest reliable solution  here are the parts   create a version py file INSIDE the folder of your package   mypackage      Store the version here so    1  we don t load dependencies by storing it in   init   py   2  we can import it in setup py for the same reason   3  we can import it into your module module   version      1 2 7    in setup py   exec open  mypackage version py   read    setup      name  mypackage       version   version      in the main folder init py   from  version import   version     The exec   function runs the script outside of any imports  since setup py is run before the module can be imported  You still only need to manage the version number in one file in one place  but unfortunately it is not in setup py   that s the downside  but having no import bugs is the upside

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arrow handles it in an interesting way   Now  since 2e5031b   In arrow   init   py     version      x y z    In setup py   from arrow import   version    setup      name  arrow       version   version                    Before  In arrow   init   py     version      x y z  VERSION     version     In setup py   def grep attrname       pattern   r  0  W   W            format attrname      strval    re findall pattern  file text      return strval  file text   read fpath  arrow   init   py     setup      name  arrow       version grep    version

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I use a JSON file in the package dir  This fits Zooko s requirements   Inside pkg dir pkg info json     version    0 1 0     Inside setup py   from distutils core import setup import json  with open  pkg dir pkg info json   as fp       info   json load fp   setup      version  info  version                    Inside pkg dir   init   py   import json from os path import dirname  with open dirname   file        pkg info json   as fp       info   json load fp     version      info  version     I also put other information in pkg info json  like author  I like to use JSON because I can automate management of metadata

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Also worth noting is that as well as   version   being a semi-std  in python so is   version info   which is a tuple  in the simple cases you can just do something like     version      1 2 3    version info     tuple   int num  for num in   version   split             and you can get the   version   string from a file  or whatever

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Rewritten 2017-05 After 13  years of writing Python code and managing various packages  I came to the conclusion that DIY is maybe not the best approach  I started using the pbr package for dealing with versioning in my packages  If you are using git as your SCM  this will fit into your workflow like magic  saving your weeks of work  you will be surprised about how complex the issue can be   As of today  pbr is the 11th most used python package  and reaching this level didn t include any dirty tricks  It was only one thing -- fixing a common packaging problem in a very simple way  pbr can do more of the package maintenance burden  and is not limited to versioning  but it does not force you to adopt all its benefits  So to give you an idea about how it looks to adopt pbr in one commit have a look switching packaging to pbr Probably you would observed that the version is not stored at all in the repository  PBR does detect it from Git branches and tags  No need to worry about what happens when you do not have a git repository because pbr does  quot compile quot  and cache the version when you package or install the applications  so there is no runtime dependency on git  Old solution Here is the best solution I ve seen so far and it also explains why  Inside yourpackage version py    Store the version here so    1  we don t load dependencies by storing it in   init   py   2  we can import it in setup py for the same reason   3  we can import it into your module module   version      0 12   Inside yourpackage   init   py  from  version import   version    Inside setup py  exec open  yourpackage version py   read    setup              version   version             If you know another approach that seems to be better let me know

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For what it s worth  if you re using NumPy distutils  numpy distutils misc util Configuration has a make svn version py   method that embeds the revision number inside package   svn version   in the variable version

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Not directly an answer to your question  but you should consider naming it   version    not version   This is almost a quasi-standard  Many modules in the standard library use   version    and this is also used in lots of 3rd-party modules  so it s the quasi-standard   Usually    version   is a string  but sometimes it s also a float or tuple   Edit  as mentioned by S Lott  Thank you    PEP 8 says it explicitly      Module Level Dunder Names      Module level  dunders   i e  names with two leading and two trailing   underscores  such as   all      author      version    etc    should be placed after the module docstring but before any import   statements except from   future   imports    You should also make sure that the version number conforms to the format described in PEP 440  PEP 386 a previous version of this standard

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I use a single  version py file as the  once cannonical place  to store version information    It provides a   version   attribute  It provides the standard metadata version  Therefore it will be detected by pkg resources or other tools that parse the package metadata  EGG-INFO and or PKG-INFO  PEP 0345   It doesn t import your package  or anything else  when building your package  which can cause problems in some situations   See the comments below about what problems this can cause   There is only one place that the version number is written down  so there is only one place to change it when the version number changes  and there is less chance of inconsistent versions    Here is how it works  the  one canonical place  to store the version number is a  py file  named   version py  which is in your Python package  for example in myniftyapp  version py  This file is a Python module  but your setup py doesn t import it   That would defeat feature 3   Instead your setup py knows that the contents of this file is very simple  something like     version      3 6 5    And so your setup py opens the file and parses it  with code like   import re VERSIONFILE  myniftyapp  version py  verstrline   open VERSIONFILE   rt   read   VSRE   r    version                          mo   re search VSRE  verstrline  re M  if mo      verstr   mo group 1  else      raise RuntimeError  Unable to find version string in  s      VERSIONFILE      Then your setup py passes that string as the value of the  version  argument to setup    thus satisfying feature 2   To satisfy feature 1  you can have your package  at run-time  not at setup time   import the  version file from myniftyapp   init   py like this   from  version import   version     Here is an example of this technique that I ve been using for years   The code in that example is a bit more complicated  but the simplified example that I wrote into this comment should be a complete implementation   Here is example code of importing the version   If you see anything wrong with this approach  please let me know

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pbr with bump2version This solution was derived from this article The use case - python GUI package distributed via PyInstaller  Needs to show version info  Here is the structure of the project packagex packagex  -- packagex         --   init   py         -- main py         --  version py  -- packagex spec  -- LICENSE  -- README md  --  bumpversion cfg  -- requirements txt  -- setup cfg  -- setup py   where setup py is   setup py import os  import setuptools  about      with open  quot packagex  version py quot   as f      exec f read    about   os environ  quot PBR VERSION quot     about  quot   version   quot    setuptools setup      setup requires   quot pbr quot        pbr True      version about  quot   version   quot       packagex  version py contains just   version      quot 0 0 1 quot   and packagex   init   py from   version import   version    and for  bumpversion cfg  bumpversion  current version   0 0 1 commit   False tag   False parse     P lt major gt  d      P lt minor gt  d      P lt patch gt  d    -  P lt release gt  a-z     P lt build gt  d     serialize         major   minor   patch - release  build       major   minor   patch    bumpversion part release  optional value   prod first value   dev values        dev     prod   bumpversion file packagex  version py

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Use a version py file only with   version      lt VERSION gt  param in the file  In the setup py file import the   version   param and put it s value in the setup py file like this  version   version   Another way is to use just a setup py file with version  lt CURRENT VERSION gt  - the CURRENT VERSION is hardcoded    Since we don t want to manually change the version in the file every time we create a new tag  ready to release a new package version   we can use the following    I highly recommend bumpversion package  I ve been using it for years to bump a version   start by adding version  lt VERSION gt  to your setup py file if you don t have it already   You should use a short script like this every time you bump a version   bumpversion  patch minor major  - choose only one option git push git push --tags   Then add one file per repo called   bumpversion cfg    bumpversion  current version    lt CURRENT TAG gt  commit   True tag   True tag name    new version   bumpversion file  lt RELATIVE PATH TO SETUP FILE gt     Note     You can use   version   parameter under version py file like it was suggested in other posts and update the bumpversion file like this   bumpversion file  lt RELATIVE PATH TO VERSION FILE gt   You must git commit or git reset everything in your repo  otherwise you ll get a dirty repo error   Make sure that your virtual environment includes the package of bumpversion  without it it will not work

[python] Standard way to embed version into python package?

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