BLD: ensure we give the right error message for old Python versions

Before this change, it would give a random syntax error somewhere
in `versioneer`.

1 files changed, 10 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index e54328e06..5f4b553c9 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -24,9 +24,18 @@ import sys
 import subprocess
 import textwrap
 import warnings
-import versioneer
 import builtins
 
+
+# Python supported version checks. Keep right after stdlib imports to ensure we
+# get a sensible error for older Python versions
+if sys.version_info[:2] < (3, 7):
+    raise RuntimeError("Python version >= 3.7 required.")
+
+
+import versioneer
+
+
 # This is a bit hackish: we are setting a global variable so that the main
 # numpy __init__ can detect if it is being loaded by the setup routine, to
 # avoid attempting to load components that aren't built yet.  While ugly, it's
@@ -41,10 +50,6 @@ ISRELEASED = 'dev' not in FULLVERSION
 MAJOR, MINOR, MICRO = FULLVERSION.split('.')[:3]
 VERSION = '{}.{}.{}'.format(MAJOR, MINOR, MICRO)
 
-# Python supported version checks
-if sys.version_info[:2] < (3, 7):
-    raise RuntimeError("Python version >= 3.7 required.")
-
 # The first version not in the `Programming Language :: Python :: ...` classifiers above
 if sys.version_info >= (3, 10):
     fmt = "NumPy {} may not yet support Python {}.{}."