There might be a problem with https://github.com/python/peps/blob/cea49667022a76d14fa94c8806d82442aaaa525e/pep-0508.txt#L280 in the future. What if the Python version will consist of more than 3 characters? I originally posted this as a question on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48119291/whats-with-the-definition-of-environment-marker-variable-python-version-in-pe Just as Martijn Pieters wrote there, something like `".".join(platform.python_version_tuple()[:2])` would fix the problem. I also posted about this at https://github.com/pypa/packaging/issues/119