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

Now this is gross and needs some refining (there may even be an uncovered member call in pkg_resources that I missed), but I simply do not see why this doesn't work, nor why no one has suggested it to date (Googling around has not turned this up)...note that this is Python 2.x, and would require requiring pkg_resources (sigh):

import pkg_resources

version_string = None
try:
    if pkg_resources.working_set is not None:
        disto_obj = pkg_resources.working_set.by_key.get('', None)
        # (I like adding ", None" to gets)
        if disto_obj is not None:
            version_string = disto_obj.version
except Exception:
    # Do something
    pass