version.py saves you from having to hard-code the version number of your project by getting it from git tags (directly or indirectly).

To use the script, simply copy it into your project and call get_version() in your setup.py file:

from version import get_version

setup(
    ...
    version=get_version(),
    ...
)

By default the tags that are considered to be version numbers are those that start with a digit. If you use a prefix, for example a v, modify the PREFIX constant in version.py accordingly.

You need to distribute the version.py file in your sdist packages by adding the following line in the MANIFEST.in file:

include version.py

For the script to work within git archives (for example those automatically generated by GitHub for each tag) you need to add the following line to the .gitattributes file:

version.py  export-subst

Note: if you don't care about git archives, or you're looking for a solution that works with Mercurial, then you can use setuptools_scm instead.

Compatibility: python 3.x and 2.7

Licence: CC0 Public Domain Dedication