[Python-Dev] some minor questions about pep8

[Donald Stufft]

> On Mar 21, 2015, at 4:53 PM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mar 20, 2015, at 08:53 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> 
>> FWIW, I think __version__, __author__ etc. were bad ideas. Almost nobody
>> manages these correctly. Note that the PEP 8 section starts with less than
>> an endorsement: "If you *have* to have Subversion, CVS, or RCS crud in your
>> source file, do it as follows."
> 
> I tend to agree.  Individual module version numbers are mostly useless,
> especially with today's hash-based vcses.
> 
> That's different than package versions, and for which I really need to
> resurrect and update PEP 396.

I sort of think (though I haven’t completely convinced myself) that adding
something like __version__ to a package is a work around to the fact that
we don’t have an API that lets someone ask “what is the distribution and
version that this module/import-package came from”.

Something like:

    >>> import theorticalapi
    >>> import mymodule
    >>>
    >>> d = theorticalapi.module_dist(mymodule)
    >>> print(d.name)
    >>> mycustommodules
    >>> print(d.version)
    >>> 1.0

Since we (theoretically) should have all of this information already inside
of the packaging metadata, we just don’t have a way to say “given a particular
import, give me the information I want).

> 
>> That said, if an official answer is required, common sense would suggest
>> that __version__ should go before the imports. (I would put it before the
>> docstring too, except then the docstring wouldn't be a docstring any more.
>> Go figure.)
> 
> And after __future__ imports too, right?
> 
> Cheers,
> -Barry
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---
Donald Stufft
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