I think the reason for the wxversion requirement was that people were running into trouble when they had two versions installed; maybe they had 2.6 and 2.8, and the 2.6 was getting imported.

Why is it so onerous to require wxversion?

You're right, it's not terribly onerous. Indeed, wxPython defaults to building wxversion. Perhaps my package manager (homebrew) simply made a poor choice in choosing to override this.

As a novice, it took me quite a bit of time to determine the problem here. In doing so, I found a stackoverflow question where the poster had similar issues. Add in the fact that the obvious ways to extend the python path (.pth files and $PYTHONPATH) don't respect nested .pth files to an already complicated installation process, and many users will get lost. There's no axe to grind; I'm just trying to save others from the same issues. And indeed, your pull request does accomplish part of that.

I agree with @efiring: wxversion has been insanely useful in the past. wxpython tends to change APIs wholesale with each release, so having multiple versions installed is a necessity, and wxversion is the most sane way to handle that case. I think I prefer #886 over this.

EDIT: Fixed PR number

I'm going to close this and merge #886. An alternative would be to simply warn if wxversion is not present; if discussion indicates that is a good idea, then it can be advanced as a pull request to master.