How to determine actual version of GObject bindings using API

I'm writing a Python script that uses a "recent" functionality in the Gio library.

How can I check that on the users system the library is recent enough?

• If I check Gio._version the answer is 2.0
• If I use gi.require_version('Gio', '2.78') before the import I get the error Namespace Gio is already loaded with version 2.0
• My /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig/gio-2.0.pc says 2.80 but I'm not sure that users will have a .PC file to check.

Any solution, besides checking that the required functions are in the module directory?

For GLib specifically part of its API is GLib.MAJOR_VERSION, GLib.MINOR_VERSION, and GLib.MICRO_VERSION: https://docs.gtk.org/glib/version.html

There might be a pygobject function for this but I didn't see one.

As you found out most of the gi methods relate to the API version, not library version. So like Gtk 3.0 vs 4.0.

I'll also add for dynamic languages you would sometimes check at runtime what is available, hasattr(GLib, 'some_new_method_i_want'), instead of checking for version numbers.