---
id: devpi-common
version: "4.1.1"
license: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,… (full text in the JSON record)
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# devpi-common — Utilities jointly used by devpi-server, devpi-client and others.

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 227.1K/mo

## What it is and what it does

devpi-common is a utility library that centralizes shared functionality used by devpi-server, devpi-client, and related tools. It provides version comparison and normalization (including legacy version support via packaging-legacy), secure tar extraction with guards against malicious archives, and type information exports. The package depends on lazy, packaging-legacy, and requests, making it a lightweight bridge for devpi ecosystem components that need consistent version handling and file operations.

The library is production-stable and actively maintained, with recent releases addressing type hints, memory efficiency through __slots__, and security improvements in archive extraction. It supports Python 3.7 through 3.14 and PyPy, making it compatible with a wide range of Python environments.

Use it for:

- Building devpi-server or devpi-client extensions that need consistent version parsing and comparison.
- Integrating legacy Python package version handling into custom package management tools.
- Safely extracting and validating tar archives in package distribution workflows.
- Standardizing version normalization across multiple devpi ecosystem components.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides shared utility functions for devpi-server and devpi-client, including version handling, tar extraction safety, and legacy package version support.

Yes. This is a stable, actively maintained utility library with low install friction, permissive licensing, and no known vulnerabilities. Install it if you are building on the devpi ecosystem or need its specific version-handling and tar-extraction utilities; otherwise, it is primarily useful as a transitive dependency of devpi-server or devpi-client.

## Install

pip install devpi-common
uv add devpi-common
poetry add devpi-common

## Installing devpi-common

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-Python wheel distribution. Actively maintained as of 2026-02-09 with recent bug fixes and memory optimizations; repository shows 1214 stars and was last committed to 2026-08-10.

License in practice: MIT license (permissive) permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution with minimal restrictions—suitable for both open-source and proprietary projects.

Quickstart:

pip install devpi-common

from devpi_common.version import Version
v = Version('1.0.0')
print(v)

Verify before relying:

- Whether the version handling and tar extraction utilities are suitable for production use outside the devpi ecosystem.
- Performance characteristics of the __slots__ optimization introduced in 4.1.0 for memory-constrained environments.

## Package facts

- License: Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,… (full text in the JSON record) (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 227.1K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

devpi utilities shared library, version handling and comparison, legacy package version support, tar extraction security, devpi common functions, package-management, version-handling

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/devpi-common) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/devpi-common/)