How can I get the version defined in setup.py (setuptools) in my package?

Question

How could I get the version defined in setup.py from my package (for --version, or other purposes)?

Answer 1

I wasn't happy with these answers... didn't want to require setuptools, nor make a whole separate module for a single variable, so I came up with these.

For when you are sure the main module is in pep8 style and will stay that way:

version = '0.30.unknown'
with file('mypkg/mymod.py') as f:
    for line in f:
        if line.startswith('__version__'):
            _, _, version = line.replace("'", '').split()
            break

If you'd like to be extra careful and use a real parser:

import ast
version = '0.30.unknown2'
with file('mypkg/mymod.py') as f:
    for line in f:
        if line.startswith('__version__'):
            version = ast.parse(line).body[0].value.s
            break

setup.py is somewhat of a throwaway module so not an issue if it is a bit ugly.

---

Update: funny enough I've moved away from this in recent years and started using a separate file in the package called meta.py. I put lots of meta data in there that I might want to change frequently. So, not just for one value.