Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer

version-string management for VCS-controlled trees
https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer

Last synced: 8 days ago
JSON representation

version-string management for VCS-controlled trees

Lists

README 

        
The Versioneer

==============



* like a rocketeer, but for versions!

* https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer

* Brian Warner

* License: Public Domain (Unlicense)

* Compatible with: Python 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11 and pypy3

* Experimental support for Python 3.12.

* [![Latest Version][pypi-image]][pypi-url]

* [![Build Status][travis-image]][travis-url]



This is a tool for managing a recorded version number in setuptools-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.



## Quick Install



Versioneer provides two installation modes. The "classic" vendored mode installs

a copy of versioneer into your repository. The experimental build-time dependency mode

is intended to allow you to skip this step and simplify the process of upgrading.



### Vendored mode



* `pip install versioneer` to somewhere in your $PATH

   * A [conda-forge recipe](https://github.com/conda-forge/versioneer-feedstock) is

     available, so you can also use `conda install -c conda-forge versioneer`

* add a `[tool.versioneer]` section to your `pyproject.toml` or a

  `[versioneer]` section to your `setup.cfg` (see [Install](INSTALL.md))

   * Note that you will need to add `tomli; python_version < "3.11"` to your

     build-time dependencies if you use `pyproject.toml`

* run `versioneer install --vendor` in your source tree, commit the results

* verify version information with `python setup.py version`



### Build-time dependency mode



* `pip install versioneer` to somewhere in your $PATH

   * A [conda-forge recipe](https://github.com/conda-forge/versioneer-feedstock) is

     available, so you can also use `conda install -c conda-forge versioneer`

* add a `[tool.versioneer]` section to your `pyproject.toml` or a

  `[versioneer]` section to your `setup.cfg` (see [Install](INSTALL.md))

* add `versioneer` (with `[toml]` extra, if configuring in `pyproject.toml`)

  to the `requires` key of the `build-system` table in `pyproject.toml`:

  ```toml

  [build-system]

  requires = ["setuptools", "versioneer[toml]"]

  build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

  ```

* run `versioneer install --no-vendor` in your source tree, commit the results

* verify version information with `python setup.py version`



## Version Identifiers



Source trees come from a variety of places:



* a version-control system checkout (mostly used by developers)

* a nightly tarball, produced by build automation

* a snapshot tarball, produced by a web-based VCS browser, like github's

  "tarball from tag" feature

* a release tarball, produced by "setup.py sdist", 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 keyword ($Id$, etc)

* a `_version.py` created 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



## Theory of Operation



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.



`_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.



To allow `setup.py` to compute a version too, a `versioneer.py` is added to

the top level of your source tree, next to `setup.py` and the `setup.cfg`

that configures it. This overrides several distutils/setuptools commands to

compute the version when invoked, and changes `setup.py build` and `setup.py

sdist` to replace `_version.py` with a small static file that contains just

the generated version data.



## Installation



See [INSTALL.md](./INSTALL.md) for detailed installation instructions.



## Version-String Flavors



Code which uses Versioneer can learn about its version string at runtime by

importing `_version` from your main `__init__.py` file and running the

`get_versions()` function. From the "outside" (e.g. in `setup.py`), you can

import the top-level `versioneer.py` and run `get_versions()`.



Both functions return a dictionary with different flavors of version

information:



* `['version']`: A condensed version string, rendered using the selected

  style. This is the most commonly used value for the project's version

  string. The default "pep440" style yields strings like `0.11`,

  `0.11+2.g1076c97`, or `0.11+2.g1076c97.dirty`. See the "Styles" section

  below for alternative styles.



* `['full-revisionid']`: detailed revision identifier. For Git, this is the

  full SHA1 commit id, e.g. "1076c978a8d3cfc70f408fe5974aa6c092c949ac".



* `['date']`: Date and time of the latest `HEAD` commit. For Git, it is the

  commit date in ISO 8601 format. This will be None if the date is not

  available.



* `['dirty']`: a boolean, True if the tree has uncommitted changes. Note that

  this is only accurate if run in a VCS checkout, otherwise it is likely to

  be False or None



* `['error']`: if the version string could not be computed, this will be set

  to a string describing the problem, otherwise it will be None. It may be

  useful to throw an exception in setup.py if this is set, to avoid e.g.

  creating tarballs with a version string of "unknown".



Some variants are more useful than others. Including `full-revisionid` in a

bug report should allow developers to reconstruct the exact code being tested

(or indicate the presence of local changes that should be shared with the

developers). `version` is suitable for display in an "about" box or a CLI

`--version` output: it can be easily compared against release notes and lists

of bugs fixed in various releases.



The installer adds the following text to your `__init__.py` to place a basic

version in `YOURPROJECT.__version__`:



    from ._version import get_versions

    __version__ = get_versions()['version']

    del get_versions



## Styles



The setup.cfg `style=` configuration controls how the VCS information is

rendered into a version string.



The default style, "pep440", produces a PEP440-compliant string, equal to the

un-prefixed tag name for actual releases, and containing an additional "local

version" section with more detail for in-between builds. For Git, this is

TAG[+DISTANCE.gHEX[.dirty]] , using information from `git describe --tags

--dirty --always`. For example "0.11+2.g1076c97.dirty" indicates that the

tree is like the "1076c97" commit but has uncommitted changes (".dirty"), and

that this commit is two revisions ("+2") beyond the "0.11" tag. For released

software (exactly equal to a known tag), the identifier will only contain the

stripped tag, e.g. "0.11".



Other styles are available. See [details.md](details.md) in the Versioneer

source tree for descriptions.



## Debugging



Versioneer tries to avoid fatal errors: if something goes wrong, it will tend

to return a version of "0+unknown". To investigate the problem, run `setup.py

version`, which will run the version-lookup code in a verbose mode, and will

display the full contents of `get_versions()` (including the `error` string,

which may help identify what went wrong).



## Known Limitations



Some situations are known to cause problems for Versioneer. This details the

most significant ones. More can be found on Github

[issues page](https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer/issues).



### Subprojects



Versioneer has limited support for source trees in which `setup.py` is not in

the root directory (e.g. `setup.py` and `.git/` are *not* siblings). The are

two common reasons why `setup.py` might not be in the root:



* Source trees which contain multiple subprojects, such as

  [Buildbot](https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot), which contains both

  "master" and "slave" subprojects, each with their own `setup.py`,

  `setup.cfg`, and `tox.ini`. Projects like these produce multiple PyPI

  distributions (and upload multiple independently-installable tarballs).

* Source trees whose main purpose is to contain a C library, but which also

  provide bindings to Python (and perhaps other languages) in subdirectories.



Versioneer will look for `.git` in parent directories, and most operations

should get the right version string. However `pip` and `setuptools` have bugs

and implementation details which frequently cause `pip install .` from a

subproject directory to fail to find a correct version string (so it usually

defaults to `0+unknown`).



`pip install --editable .` should work correctly. `setup.py install` might

work too.



Pip-8.1.1 is known to have this problem, but hopefully it will get fixed in

some later version.



[Bug #38](https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer/issues/38) is tracking

this issue. The discussion in

[PR #61](https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer/pull/61) describes the

issue from the Versioneer side in more detail.

[pip PR#3176](https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/3176) and

[pip PR#3615](https://github.com/pypa/pip/pull/3615) contain work to improve

pip to let Versioneer work correctly.



Versioneer-0.16 and earlier only looked for a `.git` directory next to the

`setup.cfg`, so subprojects were completely unsupported with those releases.



### Editable installs with setuptools <= 18.5



`setup.py develop` and `pip install --editable .` allow you to install a

project into a virtualenv once, then continue editing the source code (and

test) without re-installing after every change.



"Entry-point scripts" (`setup(entry_points={"console_scripts": ..})`) are a

convenient way to specify executable scripts that should be installed along

with the python package.



These both work as expected when using modern setuptools. When using

setuptools-18.5 or earlier, however, certain operations will cause

`pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound` errors when running the entrypoint

script, which must be resolved by re-installing the package. This happens

when the install happens with one version, then the egg_info data is

regenerated while a different version is checked out. Many setup.py commands

cause egg_info to be rebuilt (including `sdist`, `wheel`, and installing into

a different virtualenv), so this can be surprising.



[Bug #83](https://github.com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer/issues/83) describes

this one, but upgrading to a newer version of setuptools should probably

resolve it.



## Updating Versioneer



To upgrade your project to a new release of Versioneer, do the following:



* install the new Versioneer (`pip install -U versioneer` or equivalent)

* edit `setup.cfg` and `pyproject.toml`, if necessary,

  to include any new configuration settings indicated by the release notes.

  See [UPGRADING](./UPGRADING.md) for details.

* re-run `versioneer install --[no-]vendor` in your source tree, to replace

  `SRC/_version.py`

* commit any changed files



## Future Directions



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.



## Similar projects



* [setuptools_scm](https://github.com/pypa/setuptools_scm/) - a non-vendored build-time

  dependency

* [minver](https://github.com/jbweston/miniver) - a lightweight reimplementation of

  versioneer

* [versioningit](https://github.com/jwodder/versioningit) - a PEP 518-based setuptools

  plugin



## License



To make Versioneer easier to embed, all its code is dedicated to the public

domain. The `_version.py` that it creates is also in the public domain.

Specifically, both are released under the "Unlicense", as described in

https://unlicense.org/.



[pypi-image]: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/versioneer.svg

[pypi-url]: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/versioneer/

[travis-image]:

https://img.shields.io/travis/com/python-versioneer/python-versioneer.svg

[travis-url]: https://travis-ci.com/github/python-versioneer/python-versioneer