It would be convenient for us if we could access the version string of the klayout module that is in use. A lot of python modules provide access through the use of __version__ member, I think this could be useful for klayout as well.

This might already be available and I just didn't read the klayout docs carefully enough :D But as far as I'm aware there is only the pya.Application.version member, which is not available when klayout is imported as a python module without running the klayout executable.