What’s a good way to manage version numbers in a Python project? I don’t mean:
- where should it be stored, so that other code can find it. PEP 8 tells us to use __version__, and distutils tells us to call setup() with a version= argument. The embedded string is particularly useful to report or record a version in bug reports.
- what format it should take: PEP 386 describes a format (N.N[.N]+[{a|b|c|rc}N[.N]+][.postN][.devN]) that enables comparison, so packaging tools can evaluate things like “dependency > 1.2.0”. (I happen to find this format really limiting, and this tool doesn’t necessarily produce PEP386-compliant strings, but that’s not what this post is about)
What I do mean is:
- how does the right version string get into the code?
- what does a release manager need to do when it’s time to make a new release?
The traditional approach, ages old, is to have a static string embedded in the code. Each time you’re about to make a new release, you make a commit which updates this string. It’s nice and simple, but has some problems: Continue reading →