setuptools-scm extracts Python package versions from git or hg metadata instead of declaring them as the version argument or in an SCM managed file.

Additionally, setuptools-scm provides setuptools with a list of files that are managed by the SCM
(i.e. it automatically adds all of the SCM-managed files to the sdist).
Unwanted files must be excluded via MANIFEST.in.

The preferred way to configure setuptools-scm is to author settings in a tool.setuptools_scm section of pyproject.toml.

This feature requires setuptools 61 or later. First, ensure that setuptools-scm is present during the project's build step by specifying it as one of the build requirements.

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=64", "setuptools_scm>=8"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

That will be sufficient to require setuptools-scm for projects that support PEP 518 like pip and build.

To enable version inference, you need to set the version dynamically in the project section of pyproject.toml:

[project]
# version = "0.0.1"  # Remove any existing version parameter.
dynamic = ["version"]

[tool.setuptools_scm]

Additionally, a version file can be written by specifying:

[tool.setuptools_scm]
version_file = "pkg/_version.py"

Where pkg is the name of your package.

If you need to confirm which version string is being generated or debug the configuration, you can install setuptools-scm directly in your working environment and run:

$ python -m setuptools_scm
# To explore other options, try:
$ python -m setuptools_scm --help

For further configuration see the documentation.

Some enterprise distributions like RHEL7 ship rather old setuptools versions.

In those cases its typically possible to build by using an sdist against setuptools_scm<2.0. As those old setuptools versions lack sensible types for versions, modern setuptools-scm is unable to support them sensibly.

It's strongly recommended to build a wheel artifact using modern Python and setuptools, then installing the artifact instead of trying to run against old setuptools versions.

Everyone interacting in the setuptools-scm project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

To report a security vulnerability, please use the Tidelift security contact. Tidelift will coordinate the fix and disclosure.