bioconda_utils.version gets out of sync -> use versioneer?

[mbargull]

https://github.com/bioconda/bioconda-utils/blob/v0.11.4/bioconda_utils/version.py still says 0.11.1.

What do you think about using versioneer to have a set-and-forget solution so we don't have to manually maintain that anymore ourselves?

[kyleabeauchamp]

Do folks have any thoughts on versioneer vs pbr (https://docs.openstack.org/pbr/latest/)? I've had reasonable (but not awesome) experiences with both, so figured I'd run a quick survey...

[johanneskoester]

Crazy, all this code for just a version. Is it less with PBR?

[kyleabeauchamp]

I also found PBR to be kinda heavyhanded, but we use it a bit here: https://github.com/counsyl/stor/. The setup.py at least is minimal (https://github.com/counsyl/stor/blob/master/setup.py#L5)

[mbargull]

Crazy, all this code for just a version.

Ye, it's one big blob. But I find versioneer comparatively unintrusive. It's easy to revert to previous behavior since you essentially just need to alter two setup keywords an a variable assignment (and ofc delete those big static files).
It is a bit strange at first that you have to add those big versioneer.py/_version.py to the code base. But due to being selfcontained, the advantage with that is that you don't have introduce any external dependencies (e.g., via setup_requires) during the setup.
In short: Just think of it as a dependency that you vendor to avoid any complications during setup.
As for the final build, that _version.py will just be replaced by

# This file was generated by 'versioneer.py' (0.18) from
# revision-control system data, or from the parent directory name of an
# unpacked source archive. Distribution tarballs contain a pre-generated copy
# of this file.

import json

version_json = '''
{
 "date": "2018-01-30T18:47:45+0100",
 "dirty": false,
 "error": null,
 "full-revisionid": "86ed9ccfc35acf65000c6d2c794ff24160560c51",
 "version": "0.11.4+2.g86ed9ccf"
}
'''  # END VERSION_JSON


def get_versions():
    return json.loads(version_json)

(The only strange thing with that is the json usage, IMO...)

As for pbr: I never tried that out so can't really say anything about that. But I also wasn't too keen to try it out as it's a bit more intrusive...

[mbargull]

On a second though about PBR being more intrusive: This might've been more applicable a few years back. Now (already for quite some time) that setuptools supports metadata from setup.cfg, that is less the case. Though, as said before, I can't really tell since I never used it.

[mbargull]

A main plus for versioneer some time back was to avoid those setup_requires dependencies. If you use conda-build that is, of course, not really a big deal anymore.

Overall I think it's very beneficial to have something inplace that lets us avoid that redundancy/potential inconsistency in the release process -- but I don't really mind what technique we use (as long as it's reliable).

[kyleabeauchamp]

Anything SGTM, I just wanted to hear some folks' opinions on the matter.

[johanneskoester]

Ok, merged. Let's use versioneer :-).