It must be a setuptools plugin

[KOLANICH]

No description provided.

[jwodder]

Implementing this as a setuptools plugin would just mean the syntax changes from:

from read_version import read_version

setup(
    version = read_version('packagename', '__init__.py'),
    ...
)

to:

setup(
    read_version = ['packagename', '__init__.py'],
    ...
)

I don't see that as enough of an improvement to be worth mucking about with setuptools' underdocumented extension mechanisms.

(Note: I actually submitted a pull request to setuptools that would expose this package's functionality via a literal_attr: directive in setup.cfg files, but it's been ignored so far.)

[jwodder]

I've changed my mind! — sort of. As of the release yesterday of version 0.2.0, read_version can now be used a setuptools plugin, but rather than being configured through arguments to setup(), it reads its configuration from pyproject.toml, like so:

[tool.read_version]
# This sets your project's version to the value of the __version__ variable in packagename/__init__.py:
version = "packagename.__init__:__version__"

See the README for more information.

[KOLANICH]

Nice, thanks.