Suggestion to pick up version from the git tag

[Eothred]

Rather than hard-coding the version number in setup.py, you may follow this approach.

Benefits:

• You ensure that the git tag is accurate
• version is defined only in one place (the git tag itself).
• You get remi.__version__ that tells you exact version (including commit hash), useful when users report bugs

Drawbacks:

• version is not found in the sources anymore, which may be of interest for historical reasons in the long run
• import remi is a bit slower now it looks like. This is to get remi.__version__ dynamically, that part could be excluded.

Below you see how it looks at runtime. The dev66 part means "66 commits ahead of the tag 2020.3.11". f276307 is the short hash of the exact commit.

% python
Python 3.8.5 (default, Sep  5 2020, 10:50:12) 
[GCC 10.2.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import remi
>>> remi.__version__
'2020.3.11.dev69+gf276307'

[Eothred]

So there are then two separate parts to this suggestion, you might like none of them, one of them or both:

• use scm to define version number
• have the version number easily accessible at runtime

[dddomodossola]

This is great, I will test it soon ;-)

[dddomodossola]

@Eothred can you please teach me on how to add scm version number?

[Eothred]

scm version = git tag (scm just a general abbreviation for source-control management, could be other systems than git).

So with this proposal (which depending on how you prefer it, you may reject), whenever you make a git tag, that becomes the new version of the python library as well.

[dddomodossola]

:D That's right, I confused scm with svn . I have one question. How you generated the following version number '2020.3.11.dev69+gf276307' ? Which git command you used?

[Eothred]

Sorry for the late reply.

The command to generate this is git describe.

Apologies for messing up the builds without the git repository. In that case it might be that this MR is causing more harm than good. Your solution is neat though

[dddomodossola]

@Eothred No problem ;-). However this is a good improvement