You probably have moved on by now, but I'm still going to comment on your request.

In order to override my_package.VERSION the plugin would first need to find the line of code where VERSION is assigned. As far as I know the assignment can be in any source file of the package.
The only method I can think of to accomplish this task is to use the ast module, but that seems rather difficult.

Can you think of a better solution?

pyproject.toml also allows dynamic metadata (PEP 621)

• Setuptools (Dynamic Metadata)
• Flit

@abichinger as for now you are not checking if pyproject.project.version exists

Maybe it's better to add option, which disables version change in local files, only build and upload package

@v1ack I think skipping the version update defeats the purpose of this package.

I imagine we could add an option called versionCmd. If the option is set, we skip the execution of the script set_version.py. This should make it possible to use a dynamic version.

Example:

// .releaserc.json
{
    "branches": ["main"],
    "plugins": [
        "@semantic-release/commit-analyzer",
        "@semantic-release/release-notes-generator",
        [
            "semantic-release-pypi",
            {
                "versionCmd": "hatch version {version}"
            }
        ],
    ]
}

@abichinger yes, sounds good
Just to mention, there is another ability to run custom commands https://github.com/semantic-release/exec

Just to mention, there is another ability to run custom commands https://github.com/semantic-release/exec

@v1ack That's right, the difference will be that normalizeVersion is called before running the command set by versionCmd. normalizeVersion sanitizes some versions (e.g. 1.0.0-beta.1 becomes 1.0.0b1). I have to admit, I'm not sure if normalizeVersion is still necessary, because using 1.0.0-beta.1 directly works when using hatch or setuptools as build backend.

Sources:
https://semantic-release.gitbook.io/semantic-release/usage/workflow-configuration#prerelease
https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/discussions/versioning/

versionCmd can now be used to dynamically set the version.