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

We wanted to put the meta information about our package pypackagery in __init__.py, but could not since it has third-party dependencies as PJ Eby already pointed out (see his answer and the warning regarding the race condition).

We solved it by creating a separate module pypackagery_meta.py that contains only the meta information:

"""Define meta information about pypackagery package."""

__title__ = 'pypackagery'
__description__ = ('Package a subset of a monorepo and '
                   'determine the dependent packages.')
__url__ = 'https://github.com/Parquery/pypackagery'
__version__ = '1.0.0'
__author__ = 'Marko Ristin'
__author_email__ = 'marko.ristin@gmail.com'
__license__ = 'MIT'
__copyright__ = 'Copyright 2018 Parquery AG'

then imported the meta information in packagery/__init__.py:

# ...

from pypackagery_meta import __title__, __description__, __url__, \
    __version__, __author__, __author_email__, \
    __license__, __copyright__

# ...

and finally used it in setup.py:

import pypackagery_meta

setup(
    name=pypackagery_meta.__title__,
    version=pypackagery_meta.__version__,
    description=pypackagery_meta.__description__,
    long_description=long_description,
    url=pypackagery_meta.__url__,
    author=pypackagery_meta.__author__,
    author_email=pypackagery_meta.__author_email__,
    # ...
    py_modules=['packagery', 'pypackagery_meta'],
 )

You must include pypackagery_meta into your package with py_modules setup argument. Otherwise, you can not import it upon installation since the packaged distribution would lack it.