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[Python-Dev] Module version variable

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sat Mar 19 03:40:43 CET 2011 
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.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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