[Python-Dev] PEP 396, Module Version Numbers

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 10, 2011, at 08:52 AM, Ben Finney wrote:

>Nitpick: Please call these “version strings”. A version string is hardly
>ever just one number, and not in the general case anyway.

The PEP title does say version *numbers* (plural), and that seems more general
than using 'strings' here.

>    Emily maintains a package consisting of programs and modules in
>    several languages that inter-operate; several are Python, but some
>    are Unix shell, Perl, and there are some C modules. Emily decides
>    the simplest API for all these modules to get the package version
>    string is a single text file named ``version`` at the root of the
>    project tree. All the programs and modules, including the
>    ``setup.py`` file, simply read the contents of ``version`` to get
>    the version string.
>
>This is an often-overlooked case, I think. The unspoken assumption is
>often that ``setup.py`` is a suitable place for the overall version
>string, but this is not the case when that string must be read by
>non-Python programs.

I'm not certain that the additional story informs any recommendations made by
the PEP.  In the case where the version number is kept in some external file,
then you'd likely see something like this in setup.py:

setup(version=open('version.txt').read())

or this in foo/__init__.py:

__version__ = open('version.txt').read()

The details aren't that important, but the fact that the version is kept
in an external file doesn't change any of the recommendations the PEP is
already making.

Cheers,
-Barry
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