How can I get the installed GDAL/OGR version from python?

Question

How can I get the installed GDAL/OGR version from python?

I aware of the gdal-config program and are currently using the following:

In [3]: import commands

In [4]: commands.getoutput('gdal-config --version')
Out[4]: '1.7.2'

However, I suspect there is a way to do this using the python API itself. Any dice?

Answer 1

gdal.VersionInfo() does what I want:

>>> osgeo.gdal.VersionInfo()
'1604'

This works on both my Windows box and Ubuntu install. gdal.__version__ gives an error on my Windows installation, although it works on my Ubuntu installation:

>>> import osgeo.gdal
>>> print osgeo.gdal.__version__
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute '__version__'