setuptools-version-command

Get version from version control instead of hardcoding it into setup.py

introduction

Instead of hardcoding the version in setup.py like this:

setup(
    name='some-dist-name',
    version='1.0',
    ...)

This package allows specifying a VCS command like this:

setup(
    name='some-dist-name',
    version_command='git describe',
    ...)

...Which will then update the version into some-dist-name.egg-info/version.txt, so that the version can also be found if setup.py is being run from a sdist or something.

When it can find the version from either some-dist-name.egg-info/version.txt or the output of the version_command, it will update the version key that is normally used for the version, such as what's used in the sdist filename and so on.

setup keyword

Instead of specifying the version keyword argument, specify the version_command keyword argument. It can either be a str or a tuple. If it's a str, it's interpreted as just the command to execute, for example git describe. If it's a tuple, it must have two elements, the first must be the command, and the second specifies how to adapt the version string to PEP440 and must one have one of the following values:

None takes output of command as is:

Do nothing, ignore PEP440 and accept that pip/setuptools will throw warnings

pep440-git-local moves number of commits and hash as local identifier:

• Change 1.2.3 to 1.2.3
• Change 1.2.3-10-abc1234 to 1.2.3+git-10-abc1234

pep440-git-dev or pep440-git moves number of commits into development release identifier and omits hash:

• Change 1.2.3.dev to 1.2.3.dev0
• Change 1.2.3.dev-N-abc1234 to 1.2.3.devN
• Change 1.2.3 to 1.2.3

In other works, it excepts you to create a separate .dev-ending tag after each release, until you create a release tag again. If you are not on tag, and don't have .dev-ending tag, following will happen:

• Change 1.2.3-N-abc1234 to 1.2.3.devN

This is against PEP440-specification and supported only for backwards-compatibility. It may be removed in time.

installation

To use it, just do this:

pip install setuptools-version-command

With the pip of the global python. (Or use --user.)

testing

To test it, run ./setup.py --version.

developing

Within a checkout of this repo:

virtualenv env
env/bin/pip install --editable .
env/bin/python setup.py --version

Make sure that you change the setup.py so that it actually makes use of setuptools-version-command.