Getting package version using pkg_resources?

Question

What is the recommended way getting hold of the package version of a package in the $PYTHONPATH or sys.path?

I remember that the pkg_resource module has some functionality for this but I can not find any related information. Please don't point me to solution using a version.py file and reading it somehow. Using pkg_resources is the way to go but how exactly?

Answer 1

>>> import pkg_resources
>>> pkg_resources.get_distribution("PIL").version
'1.1.7'

Answer 2

I found it quite unreliable to use the various tools available (including the best one pkg_resources mentioned by this other answer), as most of them do not cover all cases. For example built-in modules and modules not installed but just added to the python path (by your IDE for example). Since we needed a reliable way to get the version of any package, module or submodule, I ended up writing getversion. It is quite simple to use:

from getversion import get_module_version
import foo
version, details = get_module_version(foo)

See the documentation for details.