INSTALL.md

Installation

First, decide on values for the following configuration variables:

• VCS: the version control system you use. Currently accepts "git".

• style: the style of version string to be produced. See Styles for details. Defaults to "pep440", which looks like TAG[+DISTANCE.gSHORTHASH[.dirty]].

• versionfile_source:

  A project-relative pathname into which the generated version strings should be written. This is usually a _version.py next to your project's main __init__.py file, so it can be imported at runtime. If your project uses src/myproject/__init__.py, this should be src/myproject/_version.py. This file should be checked in to your VCS as usual: the copy created below by versioneer install 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.

  This must be set even if your project does not have any modules (and will therefore never import _version.py), since "setup.py sdist" -based trees still need somewhere to record the pre-calculated version strings. Anywhere in the source tree should do. If there is a __init__.py next to your _version.py, the versioneer install command (described below) will append some __version__-setting assignments, if they aren't already present.

• 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'.

  If this is set to None, then setup.py build will not attempt to rewrite any _version.py in the built tree. If your project does not have any libraries (e.g. if it only builds a script), then you should use versionfile_build = None. To actually use the computed version string, your setup.py will need to override distutils.command.build_scripts with a subclass that explicitly inserts a copy of versioneer.get_version() into your script file. See test/demoapp-script-only/setup.py for an example.

• 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, using either tag_prefix= or tag_prefix=''.

• parentdir_prefix:

  a optional 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-'. To disable this feature, just omit the field from your setup.cfg.

This tool provides one script, named versioneer. That script has one mode, "install", which writes a copy of versioneer.py into the current directory and runs versioneer.py setup to finish the installation.

To versioneer-enable your project:

• 1: Install versioneer with pip install versioneer

• 2: Modify your setup.cfg, adding a section named [versioneer] and populating it with the configuration values you decided earlier (note that the option names are not case-sensitive):

  [versioneer]
  VCS = git
  style = pep440
  versionfile_source = src/myproject/_version.py
  versionfile_build = myproject/_version.py
  tag_prefix =
  parentdir_prefix = myproject-
  

• 3: Run versioneer install. This will do the following:

  • copy versioneer.py into the top of your source tree
  • create _version.py in the right place (versionfile_source)
  • modify your __init__.py (if one exists next to _version.py) to define __version__ (by calling a function from _version.py)
  • modify your MANIFEST.in to include both versioneer.py and the generated _version.py in sdist tarballs

  versioneer install will complain about any problems it finds with your setup.py or setup.cfg. Run it multiple times until you have fixed all the problems.

• 4: add a import versioneer to your setup.py, and add the following arguments to the setup() call:

    version=versioneer.get_version(),
    cmdclass=versioneer.get_cmdclass(),
  

  If your project uses a special cmdclass, pass that cmdclass as a parameter. For example:

    from numpy.distutils.core import numpy_cmdclass
    cmdclass=versioneer.get_cmdclass(numpy_cmdclass),
  

• 5: commit these changes to your VCS. To make sure you won't forget, versioneer install will mark everything it touched for addition using git add. Don't forget to add setup.py and setup.cfg too.

Post-Installation Usage

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

Versioneer will report "0+untagged.NUMCOMMITS.gHASH" until your tree has at least one tag in its history.