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?

since Python 3.8, you have [importlib.metadata](https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.metadata.html). — FObersteiner, Mar 10 '22 at 11:37

score 29 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 16 '12 at 14:17

29

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

answered Jan 16 '12 at 14:17

AdamKG

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This gives me an error: `DistributionNotFound: The 'PIL' distribution was not found and is required by the application` – Gaurav Srivastava Dec 23 '21 at 01:34
PIL is just an example package name. You would use the name of whatever package you're trying to check the version of. – AdamKG Dec 23 '21 at 17:20
I have PIL installed on the environment, so the command should have worked. Actually, `pkg_resources.get_distribution('Pillow').version` worked for me. Other packages that worked are `numpy`, `scipy`. `os`, `math` did not work. – Gaurav Srivastava Dec 25 '21 at 20:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 06 '19 at 00:46

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.

Getting package version using pkg_resources?

2 Answers2