Consistent versioning in Python project

Question

I have a Python project which has Sphinx documentation and distutils for publishing to Pip.

Both of these functions require a version (e.g., 0.4b3)

Is there a best practice for automatically maintaining a consistent version number across the various utilities which require version numbers?

Also, is there anything that integrates with git (e.g., via tags)?

Answer 1

This is one of the most asked question on Python distutils mailing lists. You can import your module from setup.py as well as from conf.py and get module.version. This may not work depending on your imports, your use of 2to3 or other factors, in which case you can move your version to a text file and open that from your module, setup.py and conf.py.

I would suggest that it’s no great burden to update the version number in three places. It’s a minor step in the release process.