How to tell whether setup() is reading the setup.cfg?

Question

I got a Python project generated using pyscaffold and I see the two standard main project files at the root setup.py and setup.cfg . I modified the setup.cfg file adding a line under the metadata section with version=1.0.0 .

However, running python setup.py develop or python setup.py sdist I see in the outputs that the artifact name doesn't have the version I specified in the setup.cfg . I see the following:

Installed c:\users\SkyWalker\code\my_project\src
Processing dependencies for my_project==0.0.post0.dev1+g8386a10.dirty
Finished processing dependencies for my_project==0.0.post0.dev1+g8386a10.dirty

The distribution artifact has this 0.0.post0.dev1+g8386a10.dirty version and I don't know where it's getting it from. How to tell whether python.cfg is read at all?

The pyscaffold generated setup.py looks like this:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
    Setup file for aqm_database_api.
    Use setup.cfg to configure your project.

    This file was generated with PyScaffold 3.2.3.
    PyScaffold helps you to put up the scaffold of your new Python project.
    Learn more under: https://pyscaffold.org/
"""
import sys

from pkg_resources import VersionConflict, require
from setuptools import setup

try:
    require('setuptools>=37.0')
except VersionConflict:
    print("Error: version of setuptools is too old (<37.0)!")
    sys.exit(1)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    setup(use_pyscaffold=True)

so it's not loading setup.cfg explicitly, also the line require('setuptools>=37.0') fails every time, no matter what the version value there is.

Answer 1

PyScaffold configures setuptools to use the version given by setuptools_scm . It means that, in order to change the version of your project you need to use git to tag your project . This is briefly described in https://pyscaffold.org/en/v3.3.x/features.html#versioning-and-git-integration .

I suppose that is the reason why changing setup.cfg will not change the version of the distribution created. A priori setuptools should always read setup.cfg .

To make sure setuptools is reading setup.cfg one experiment you can do is:

1. Make sure to remove any *.egg-info folder insude the root of your project or inside the src folder (to ensure you don't see a cached version).
2. Change something easy like author in the setup.cfg file
3. Build your package as you would do normally ( python setup.py bdist_wheel for example)
4. Look for a new <your-project>.egg-info folder generated either in the root of your project or inside the src directory. Read the PKG-INFO there. You should be able to see your changes which proves setuptools is reading setup.cfg (otherwise the best option should be opening a ticket/issue with setuptools )