diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index f389a9a8..efe7409c 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1,8 +1,15 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env python
 # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
-from tqdm._version import __version__
+import os
 from setuptools import setup
 
+# Get version from tqdm/_version.py
+__version__ = None
+version_file = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'tqdm', '_version.py')
+for line in open(version_file).readlines():
+    if (line.startswith('version_info') or line.startswith('__version__')):
+        exec(line.strip())
+
 setup(
     name='tqdm',
     version=__version__,
diff --git a/tqdm/_version.py b/tqdm/_version.py
index 9d384d51..6e613598 100644
--- a/tqdm/_version.py
+++ b/tqdm/_version.py
@@ -1 +1,5 @@
-__version__ = '2.0-dev'
+# Definition of the version number
+version_info = 2, 0, 0, 'dev'  # major, minor, patch, extra
+
+# Nice string for the version (mimic how IPython composes its version str)
+__version__ = '-'.join(map(str, version_info)).replace('-', '.').strip('-')