[Python-Dev] Module version variable

[Barry Warsaw]

On Mar 18, 2011, at 07:40 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

>On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 7:28 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>> Tres Seaver wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not even sure why you would want __version__ in 99% of modules:  in
>>> the ordinary cases, a module's version should be either the Python
>>> version (for a module shipped in the stdlib), or the release of the
>>> distribution which shipped it.
>>
>> It's useful to be able to find out the version of a module
>> you're using at run time so you can cope with API changes.
>>
>> I had a case just recently where the behaviour of something
>> in pywin32 changed between one release and the next. I looked
>> for an attribute called 'version' or something similar to
>> test, but couldn't find anything.
>>
>> +1 on having a standard place to look for version info.
>
>I believe __version__ *is* the standard (like __author__). IIRC it was
>proposed by Ping. I think this convention is so old that there isn't a
>PEP for it. So yes, we might as well write it down. But it's really
>nothing new.

I started an Informational PEP on this at Pycon, and will try to finish a
draft of it this week.  (I'm claiming 396 for it.)

-Barry
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