DiscoverVersion

This package automatically discovers version information for a package. It tries the following options to get the version of the package (in order):

• Check the DISCOVER_VERSION environment variable
• Inspect a PKG-INFO file
• Ask git, if the current directory is a git-repository
• Ask importlib.metadata

It is intended as a lightweight replacement for setuptools_scm.

Usage with meson-python

For projects using the meson-python build backend, add the following to your pyproject.toml:

[build-system]
requires = ["meson>=1.0.0", "meson-python>=0.13.0", "ninja", "DiscoverVersion>=0.4.0"]
build-backend = "mesonpy"

[project]
dynamic = ["version"]
dependencies = ["DiscoverVersion"]

[tool.meson-python.metadata]
version.provider = "DiscoverVersion.meson_python"

Then add the following to your toplevel __init__.py for runtime version access:

from DiscoverVersion import get_version

__version__ = get_version('my_package_name', __file__)

Usage with flit

For projects using the flit build backend, add the following lines to your pyproject.toml:

[build-system]
requires = ["flit_core>=3.2", "DiscoverVersion"]
build-backend = "flit_core.buildapi"

[project]
dynamic = ['version']
dependencies = ['DiscoverVersion']

Then add the following to your toplevel __init__.py:

from DiscoverVersion import get_version

__version__ = get_version('my_package_name', __file__)

Note that it is important to hard code the name of your package in the call to get_version. The __file__ argument is required for git-based version discovery to locate the repository.

Environment Variable Override

You can override version discovery by setting the DISCOVER_VERSION environment variable. This is useful in CI/CD pipelines where git may not be available or when building in isolated environments:

DISCOVER_VERSION=1.2.3 python -m build

Command Line Interface

DiscoverVersion provides a CLI for discovering and outputting version information:

# Print the discovered version
python -m DiscoverVersion

# Or use the entry point
discover-version

# Write version to a Python file
python -m DiscoverVersion --write-to version.py

# Write version to a plain text file (useful for Meson builds)
python -m DiscoverVersion --write-to version.txt --plain

# Specify a fallback version if discovery fails
python -m DiscoverVersion --fallback 0.0.0

# Disable specific discovery methods
python -m DiscoverVersion --no-git --no-env

CI/CD Example (GitHub Actions)

Here's an example of using DiscoverVersion in a GitHub Actions workflow with cibuildwheel:

- name: Get version from DiscoverVersion
  id: get_version
  run: |
    pip install DiscoverVersion
    echo "version=$(python -m DiscoverVersion)" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

- name: Build wheels
  uses: pypa/cibuildwheel@v2
  env:
    CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: DISCOVER_VERSION=${{ steps.get_version.outputs.version }}

Tests

Before being able to run tests, you need to execute

pip install -e .[test]

to editably install the code. Then run tests with:

pytest