Declare constant at file level in solidity 0.4.17

I need to declare a "global" constant that can be accessed by another contract. Given a very simple Solidity contract as follows:

pragma solidity ^0.4.17;

uint256 constant MY_CONSTANT = 3;

contract MyContract {
  constructor() public {}
}

This is my truffle-config.js file:

module.exports = {
  networks: {
     development: {
      host: "127.0.0.1",
      port: 9545,
      network_id: "*",
     },
  },
  compilers: {
    solc: {
      version: "^0.4.17"
    }
  }
};

When I run truffle develop then truffle compile, I got the following error:

Compiling your contracts...
===========================
> Compiling ./contracts/MyContract.sol-bin. Attempt #1

CompileError: project:/contracts/MyContract.sol:4:1: ParserError: Expected pragma, import directive or contract/interface/library definition.
uint256 constant MY_CONSTANT = 3;
^-----^

Compilation failed. See above.
    at /home/thaiminhpv/.nvm/versions/node/v16.18.1/lib/node_modules/truffle/build/webpack:/packages/compile-solidity/dist/run.js:95:1
    at Generator.next (<anonymous>)
    at fulfilled (/home/thaiminhpv/.nvm/versions/node/v16.18.1/lib/node_modules/truffle/build/webpack:/packages/compile-solidity/dist/run.js:28:43)
Truffle v5.6.4 (core: 5.6.4)
Node v16.18.1

Here is my truffle version:

$ truffle version
Truffle v5.6.4 (core: 5.6.4)
Ganache v7.5.0
Solidity - ^0.4.17 (solc-js)
Node v16.18.1
Web3.js v1.7.4

However, everything work fine when I change the solidity compiler from ^0.4.17 to 0.8.17 in truffle-config.js.

How can I declare constant at file level in solidity 0.4.17?

Because a contract can not access constant of another smart contract, we can not define a smart contract and put all constants into it.

I finally managed to get around the problem by using the library's pure function in Solidity:

library Constants {
    function MY_CONSTANT() public pure returns (uint256) {
        return 3;
    }
}

and get the constant's value in other contracts by using:

uint256 value = Constants.MY_CONSTANT();