[Python-Dev] PEP 396, Module Version Numbers

[Barry Warsaw]

On Apr 09, 2011, at 06:23 PM, Éric Araujo wrote:

>> One of the main complaint against setuptools is that having to change
>> your application code because of the packaging tool used was not a > good
>> idea.  Having to use require instead of import or resource_whatever
>> instead of open (or get_data, the most sadly underused function in > the
>> stdlib) because you use setuptools instead of distutils was a bad > thing.
>>
>> As stated in the PEP, having a __version__ attribute in the module is
>> common, so my opinion is that making the packaging tool use that info > is
>> the Right Thing™, and having the dependency in the reverse sense is
>> wrong.  I don’t see a problem with having harmless duplication in the
>> *installed* system, once in  elle.__version__ and once in the pkgutil
>> metadata database.
>
> Barry’s reply:
>
>> I'm including this section because at Pycon, some people did express > an
>> interest in deriving the version number in this direction.  I wanted > to
>> capture what that might look like.  Since this is an informational > PEP, I
>> think it makes sense to include alternative approaches, but I tend to > agree
>> with you that it will be much more common to define > module.__version__ and
>> derive the metadata from that.
>
> IOW, you can define the version only once, either in your source file  or
> in the setup.cfg file, and the PEP describes how to get that info from
> the other place.  My personal opinion is that the approach using
> pkgutil.get_distribution should be much less prominent than the one
> putting the version in the Python code.

It is already though, right?  To me anyway the PEP does emphasize setting
__version__, but I'm open to specific suggestions.

-Barry
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