Adding snapshot versions to your setuptools packages from SVN is easy, using the tag_svn_revision = true options in setup.cfg. However, getting this working for GIT proved to be more difficult, as there’s no built in support. However, I finally settled on a bash script that does the job quite nicely.

now=`date +%s`

gitversion=`git describe --long --dirty=-$now | sed 's/.\*(\[-\]\[0-9\]\[0-9]\*[-\]\[a-z0-9\]*)/1/'`

python setup.py setopt -o tag_build -s $gitversion -c egg_info

python setup.py sdist

First we generate a unique version string, based on the number of commits since the last GIT tag:

now=`date +%s`
  
gitversion=`git describe --long --dirty=-$now | sed 's/.\*(\[-\]\[0-9\]\[0-9]\*[-\]\[a-z0-9\]*)/1/'`

Then we just apply it as an option before building the release:

python setup.py setopt -o tag_build -s $gitversion -c egg_info
python setup.py sdist