How to capture package version from SCM: git
============================================

The ``Git()`` helper from tools, can be used to capture data from the Git repo in which
the *conanfile.py* recipe resides, and use it to define the version of the Conan package.

.. code-block:: python

    from conans import ConanFile, tools

    def get_version():
        git = tools.Git()
        try:
            return "%s_%s" % (git.get_branch(), git.get_revision())
        except:
            return None

    class HelloConan(ConanFile):
        name = "Hello"
        version = get_version()

        def build(self):
            ...

In this example, the package created with :command:`conan create` will be called 
``Hello/branch_commit@user/channel``. Note that ``get_version()`` returns ``None``
if it is not able to get the Git data. This is necessary when the recipe is already in the
Conan cache, and the Git repository may not be there,. A value of ``None`` makes Conan
get the version from the metadata.


How to capture package version from text or build files
=======================================================

It is common that a library version number would be already encoded in a text file, build scripts, etc.
As an example, let's assume we have the following library layout, and that we want to create a package from it:

.. code-block:: text

    conanfile.py
    CMakeLists.txt
    src
       hello.cpp
       ...


The *CMakeLists.txt* will have some variables to define the library version number. For simplicity, let's also assume
that it includes a line such as the following:

.. code-block:: cmake

    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)
    set(MY_LIBRARY_VERSION 1.2.3) # This is the version we want
    add_library(hello src/hello.cpp)


Typically, our *conanfile.py* package recipe will include:


.. code-block:: python

    class HelloConan(ConanFile):
        name = "Hello"
        version = "1.2.3"


This usually requires very little maintenance, and when the CMakeLists version is bumped, so is the *conanfile.py* version.
However, if you only want to have to update the *CMakeLists.txt* version, you can extract the version dynamically, using:


.. code-block:: python

    from conans import ConanFile
    from conans.tools import load
    import re

    def get_version():
        try:
            content = load("CMakeLists.txt")
            version = re.search(b"set\(MY_LIBRARY_VERSION (.*)\)", content).group(1)
            return version.strip()
        except Exception as e:
            return None

    class HelloConan(ConanFile):
        name = "Hello"
        version = get_version()


Even if the *CMakeLists.txt* file is not exported to the local cache, it will still work, as the ``get_version()`` function returns None
when it is not found, and then takes the version number from the package metadata (layout).