How to check if python package is latest version programmatically?

Question

How do you check if a package is at its latest version programmatically in a script and return a true or false?

I can check with a script like this:

Answer 1

Latest version:

My project luddite has this feature:

>>> import luddite
>>> luddite.get_version_pypi("gekko")
'0.2.3'

Installed version:

The canonical way to check installed version is just to access the __version__ attribute of the top-level namespace:

>>> import gekko
>>> gekko.__version__
'0.2.0'

Unfortunately not all projects set this attribute. When they don't, you can use pkg_resources to dig it out from the metadata:

>>> import pkg_resources
>>> pkg_resources.get_distribution("gekko").version
'0.2.0'