- like a rocketeer, but for versions!
- https://github.com/warner/python-versioneer
- Brian Warner
- License: Public Domain
- Compatible With: python2.6, 2.7, and 3.2, 3.3
This is a tool for managing a recorded version number in distutils-based python projects. The goal is to remove the tedious and error-prone "update the embedded version string" step from your release process. Making a new release should be as easy as recording a new tag in your version-control system, and maybe making new tarballs.
pip install versioneerto somewhere to your $PATH- run
versioneer-installerin your source tree: this installsversioneer.py - follow the instructions below (also in the
versioneer.pydocstring)
Source trees come from a variety of places:
- a version-control system checkout (mostly used by developers or eager followers)
- a nightly tarball, produced by build automation
- a snapshot tarball, produced by a web-based VCS browser, like hgweb or github's "tarball from tag" feature
- a release tarball, produced by "setup.py sdist", and perhaps distributed through PyPI
Within each source tree, the version identifier (either a string or a number, this tool is format-agnostic) can come from a variety of places:
- ask the VCS tool itself, e.g. "git describe" (for checkouts), which knows about recent "tags" and an absolute revision-id
- the name of the directory into which the tarball was unpacked
- an expanded VCS variable (
$Id$ , etc) - a
_version.pycreated by some earlier build step
For released software, the version identifier is closely related to a VCS tag. Some projects use tag names that include more than just the version string (e.g. "myproject-1.2" instead of just "1.2"), in which case the tool needs to strip the tag prefix to extract the version identifier. For unreleased software (between tags), the version identifier should provide enough information to help developers recreate the same tree, while also giving them an idea of roughly how old the tree is (after version 1.2, before version 1.3). Many VCS systems can report a description that captures this, for example 'git describe --tags --dirty --always' reports things like "0.7-1-g574ab98-dirty" to indicate that the checkout is one revision past the 0.7 tag, has a unique revision id of "574ab98", and is "dirty" (it has uncommitted changes.
The version identifier is used for multiple purposes:
- to allow the module to self-identify its version:
myproject.__version__ - to choose a name and prefix for a 'setup.py sdist' tarball
Versioneer works by adding a special _version.py file into your source
tree, where your __init__.py can import it. This _version.py knows how to
dynamically ask the VCS tool for version information at import time. However,
when you use "setup.py build" or "setup.py sdist", _version.py in the new
copy is replaced by a small static file that contains just the generated
version data.
_version.py also contains $Revision$ markers, and the installation
process marks _version.py to have this marker rewritten with a tag name
during the "git archive" command. As a result, generated tarballs will
contain enough information to get the proper version.
First, decide on values for the following configuration variables:
-
versionfile_source:A project-relative pathname into which the generated version strings should be written. This is usually a
_version.pynext to your project's main__init__.pyfile. If your project usessrc/myproject/__init__.py, this should besrc/myproject/_version.py. This file should be checked in to your VCS as usual: the copy created below by 'setup.py update_files' will include code that parses expanded VCS keywords in generated tarballs. The 'build' and 'sdist' commands will replace it with a copy that has just the calculated version string. -
versionfile_build:
Like versionfile_source, but relative to the build directory instead of
the source directory. These will differ when your setup.py uses
'package_dir='. If you have package_dir={'myproject': 'src/myproject'},
then you will probably have versionfile_build='myproject/_version.py' and
versionfile_source='src/myproject/_version.py'.
-
tag_prefix:a string, like 'PROJECTNAME-', which appears at the start of all VCS tags. If your tags look like 'myproject-1.2.0', then you should use tag_prefix='myproject-'. If you use unprefixed tags like '1.2.0', this should be an empty string.
-
parentdir_prefix:a string, frequently the same as tag_prefix, which appears at the start of all unpacked tarball filenames. If your tarball unpacks into 'myproject-1.2.0', this should be 'myproject-'.
This tool provides one script, named versioneer-installer. That script does
one thing: write a copy of versioneer.py into the current directory.
To versioneer-enable your project:
-
1: Run
versioneer-installerto copyversioneer.pyinto the top of your source tree. -
2: add the following lines to the top of your
setup.py, with the configuration values you decided earlier:import versioneer versioneer.versionfile_source = 'src/myproject/_version.py' versioneer.versionfile_build = 'myproject/_version.py' versioneer.tag_prefix = '' # tags are like 1.2.0 versioneer.parentdir_prefix = 'myproject-' # dirname like 'myproject-1.2.0' -
3: add the following arguments to the setup() call in your setup.py:
version=versioneer.get_version(), cmdclass=versioneer.get_cmdclass(), -
4: now run
setup.py update_files, which will create_version.py, and will modify your__init__.pyto define__version__(by calling a function from_version.py) -
5: modify your MANIFEST.in to include
versioneer.pyin sdist tarballs -
6: commit these changes to your VCS.
update_fileswill mark bothversioneer.pyand the generated_version.pyfor addition.
Once established, all uses of your tree from a VCS checkout should get the current version string. All generated tarballs should include an embedded version string (so users who unpack them will not need a VCS tool installed).
If you distribute your project through PyPI, then the release process should boil down to two steps:
- 1: git tag 1.0
- 2: python setup.py register sdist upload
If you distribute it through github (i.e. users use github to generate
tarballs with git archive), the process is:
- 1: git tag 1.0
- 2: git push; git push --tags
Currently, all version strings must be based upon a tag. Versioneer will report "unknown" until your tree has at least one tag in its history. This restriction will be fixed eventually (see issue #12).
This tool is designed to make it easily extended to other version-control
systems: all VCS-specific components are in separate directories like
src/git/ . The top-level versioneer.py script is assembled from these
components by running make-versioneer.py . In the future, make-versioneer.py
will take a VCS name as an argument, and will construct a version of
versioneer.py that is specific to the given VCS. It might also take the
configuration arguments that are currently provided manually during
installation by editing setup.py . Alternatively, it might go the other
direction and include code from all supported VCS systems, reducing the
number of intermediate scripts.
To make Versioneer easier to embed, all its code is hereby released into the
public domain. The _version.py that it creates is also in the public
domain.