python: add VERSION file

2021-06-01T20:21:21Z

Python infrastructure as it exists today is not capable reliably of single-sourcing a package version from a parent directory. The authors of pip are working to correct this, but as of today this is not possible. The problem is that when using pip to build and install a python package, it copies files over to a temporary directory and performs its build there. This loses access to any information in the parent directory, including git itself. Further, Python versions have a standard (PEP 440) that may or may not follow QEMU's versioning. In general, it does; but naturally QEMU does not follow PEP 440. To avoid any automatically-generated conflict, a manual version file is preferred. I am proposing: - Python tooling follows the QEMU version, indirectly, but with a major version of 0 to indicate that the API is not expected to be stable. This would mean version 0.5.2.0, 0.5.1.1, 0.5.3.0, etc. - In the event that a Python package needs to be updated independently of the QEMU version, a pre-release alpha version should be preferred, but *only* after inclusion to the qemu development or stable branches. e.g. 0.5.2.0a1, 0.5.2.0a2, and so on should be preferred prior to 5.2.0's release. - The Python core tooling makes absolutely no version compatibility checks or constraints. It *may* work with releases of QEMU from the past or future, but it is not required to. i.e., "qemu.machine" will, for now, remain in lock-step with QEMU. - We reserve the right to split the qemu package into independently versioned subpackages at a later date. This might allow for us to begin versioning QMP independently from QEMU at a later date, if we so choose. Implement this versioning scheme by adding a VERSION file and setting it to 0.6.0.0a1. Signed-off-by: John Snow Reviewed-by: Cleber Rosa Message-id: 20210527211715.394144-12-jsnow@redhat.com Signed-off-by: John Snow

qemu/python/VERSION, branch master

python: add VERSION file