Adopted code from Django's development version to derive a PEP386-compliant version number from VERSION. We shouldn't reinvent the wheel. Includes support to add a git timestamp for dev snapshots if a .git directory is present.

docs/modeltranslation/conf.py

@@ -24,12 +24,11 @@ try:
     # for |version| and |release|, also used in various other places throughout
     # the built documents.
     #
-    # The short X.Y version.
-    #version = '0.4'
-    version = modeltranslation.get_version(pep386=False, short=True)
-    # The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags.
-    #release = '0.4.0-rc1'
-    release = modeltranslation.get_version(pep386=False)
+    # The short X.Y version (e.g.'0.5').
+    version = '.'.join(str(i) for i in modeltranslation.VERSION[:2])
+    # The full PEP386-compliant version number version, including
+    # normalized alpha/beta/rc/dev tags (e.g. '0.5a1').
+    release = modeltranslation.get_version()
 except ImportError:
     version = 'dev'
     release = 'dev'

modeltranslation/__init__.py

@@ -1,44 +1,64 @@
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
-VERSION = (0, 4, 0, 'final', 0)
+"""
+Version code adopted from Django development version.
+https://github.com/django/django
+"""
+VERSION = (0, 5, 0, 'alpha', 0)
 
 
-def get_version(version=None, pep386=True, short=False):
+def get_version(version=None):
     """
-    Derives a version number as string from VERSION.
-
-    If the ``pep386`` parameter is ``True`` (default) the returned version will
-    be PEP386-compliant (e.g. 0.4.0c1), else the release style naming
-    will be used (e.g. 0.4.0-rc1).
-
-    If the ``short`` parameter is ``True``, the release style naming version
-    will omit the patch level and sub (e.g. 0.4). This is for example used for
-    sphinx.
+    Returns a PEP 386-compliant version number from VERSION.
     """
     if version is None:
-        version = VERSION
-    assert len(version) == 5
-    assert version[3] in ('alpha', 'beta', 'rc', 'final')
+        from modeltranslation import VERSION as version
+    else:
+        assert len(version) == 5
+        assert version[3] in ('alpha', 'beta', 'rc', 'final')
 
-    if pep386:
-        # Now build the two parts of the version number:
-        # main = X.Y[.Z]
-        # sub = {a|b|c}N - for alpha, beta and rc releases
-        parts = 2 if version[2] == 0 else 3
-        main = '.'.join(str(x) for x in version[:parts])
-        sub = ''
-        if version[3] == 'alpha' and version[4] == 0:
-            sub = 'a%d' % (version[4])
-        elif version[3] != 'final':
-            mapping = {'alpha': 'a', 'beta': 'b', 'rc': 'c'}
-            sub = mapping[version[3]] + str(version[4])
-        return main + sub
+    # Now build the two parts of the version number:
+    # main = X.Y[.Z]
+    # sub = .devN - for pre-alpha releases
+    #     | {a|b|c}N - for alpha, beta and rc releases
 
-    if short:
-        return '%d.%d'.format(version[0], version[1])
-    if version[3] != 'final':
-        return '%d.%d.%d-%s%d' % (
-            version[0], version[1], version[2], version[3], version[4])
-    return '%d.%d.%d' % (version[0], version[1], version[2])
+    parts = 2 if version[2] == 0 else 3
+    main = '.'.join(str(x) for x in version[:parts])
+
+    sub = ''
+    if version[3] == 'alpha' and version[4] == 0:
+        git_changeset = get_git_changeset()
+        if git_changeset:
+            sub = '.dev%s' % git_changeset
+
+    elif version[3] != 'final':
+        mapping = {'alpha': 'a', 'beta': 'b', 'rc': 'c'}
+        sub = mapping[version[3]] + str(version[4])
+
+    return str(main + sub)
 
 
-__version__ = get_version()
+def get_git_changeset():
+    """
+    Returns a numeric identifier of the latest git changeset.
+
+    The result is the UTC timestamp of the changeset in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format.
+    This value isn't guaranteed to be unique, but collisions are very unlikely,
+    so it's sufficient for generating the development version numbers.
+
+    TODO: Check if we can rely on services like read-the-docs to pick this up.
+    """
+    import datetime
+    import os
+    import subprocess
+
+    repo_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
+    git_log = subprocess.Popen(
+        'git log --pretty=format:%ct --quiet -1 HEAD', stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
+        stderr=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True, cwd=repo_dir,
+        universal_newlines=True)
+    timestamp = git_log.communicate()[0]
+    try:
+        timestamp = datetime.datetime.utcfromtimestamp(int(timestamp))
+    except ValueError:
+        return None
+    return timestamp.strftime('%Y%m%d%H%M%S')

setup.py

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 from distutils.core import setup
 
 # Dynamically calculate the version based on modeltranslation.VERSION.
-version = __import__('modeltranslation').get_version(pep386=False)
+version = __import__('modeltranslation').get_version()
 
 
 setup(