Comment 2 for bug 709170

--version should show the version as available in setup.py.

as you do a post release bump, --version should show YYYY.MM.1. a better distinction will be to add a devel string.
e.g. version="2011.09.1 (devel)"

when installed as a package, common practice is to use upstream version, not the package version.

Though some package include packaging version like QEMU or GCC:
$ qemu-x86_64-static --version
qemu-x86_64 version 0.14.1 (Debian 0.14.1+dfsg-3), Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Fabrice Bellard

For QEMU, it's passed at build time using --with-pkgversion=

IMO, we don't need the packaging version. It can be revisited later if we want it.