What is the appropriate way of raising an error for having the wrong Python version?

Question

My code requires Python version of 3.6 or higher. To ensure this, I use the following:

import sys
version = sys.version_info
assert version.major > 3 or (version.major == 3 and version.minor >= 6)

But this doesn't seem like the best way to do this (from a good coding practices viewpoint). Is there a better way?

What is the appropriate way to make sure your script is being run on an appropriate version of Python?

Answer 1

This information should be specified in your packaging information, so users are informed of the python version requirement before they ever install your python package.

Your project should have a setup.py script that is used to install your package. You can specify the python dependency in that setup script

setup(
    name='my_package',
    version='1.0.0',
    python_requires='>=3.6.0'
    ...
)

This way, it won't allow anyone to build, download, or install your package to an incompatible python version.