[Python-Dev] Module version variable

[Michael Foord]

On 16/03/2011 15:00, Raymond Hettinger wrote:
> On Mar 16, 2011, at 11:33 AM, R. David Murray wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:33:20 -0400, Michael Foord<fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk>  wrote:
>>> On 16/03/2011 12:39, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
>>>> I was editing the turtle module (for issue11571, if you are
>>>> interested) when I noticed that it has the following line:
>>>>
>>>> _ver = "turtle 1.1b- - for Python 3.1   -  4. 5. 2009"
>>>>
>>> unittest also has an outdated (and unmaintained) version number that I
>>> would like to remove. Standard library modules should be versioned by
>>> the release of Python they are packaged with (unless they are externally
>>> maintained I guess) and so should preferably *not* carry version info.
>> The email package has an internal version (which changes no more often
>> than CPython's, but may change slower).  Existing code in the field
>> tests this version attribute, so I don't think it should be deleted.
> The version number in the decimal module refers to the version of the
> spec that is being complied with.  I would like that version number
> to remain in the module.
>
> There are probably other cases where the version number is useful.
>

That's entirely fair enough, although that's not really a *module 
version number* so isn't what I was referring to. The sqlite module also 
carries version information about the version of sqlite it works with 
which is another valid use case (sqlite *also* has a module version 
number I believe, because it is externally maintained).

In the case of the unittest version number it goes back to when unittest 
*was* originally maintained externally.

As general practise is to use __version__ for module version info I 
think it would be bad (misleading) if any module (including standard 
library) reused this name for storing information that *wasn't* a module 
version but some related version info.

All the best,

Michael

> Raymond
>


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