diff --git a/python-apipkg.changes b/python-apipkg.changes
index f104497..b98121e 100644
--- a/python-apipkg.changes
+++ b/python-apipkg.changes
@@ -1,3 +1,9 @@
+-------------------------------------------------------------------
+Wed Nov 30 17:05:54 UTC 2022 - Daniel Garcia <daniel.garcia@suse.com>
+
+- Generate the _version.py file in %prep to remove completely hatch-vcs from
+  pyproject to make it build and run tests correctly
+
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
 Wed Nov 30 16:45:02 UTC 2022 - Daniel Garcia <daniel.garcia@suse.com>
 
diff --git a/python-apipkg.spec b/python-apipkg.spec
index 6cab142..38f9e0e 100644
--- a/python-apipkg.spec
+++ b/python-apipkg.spec
@@ -61,7 +61,12 @@ can copy paste the ~200 lines of code into your project.
 # Set the package version static, not dynamic, to build without the .git folder
 sed -i ':a;N;$!ba;s/dynamic = \[[^]]*\]/version = "%{version}"/g' pyproject.toml
 # Remove hatch-vcs dep to avoid cycles
+rm .gitignore
 sed -i '/tool.hatch.build.hooks.vcs/d' pyproject.toml
+cat << EOF > src/apipkg/_version.py
+version = "%{version}"
+version_tuple = tuple(map(int, version.split(".")))
+EOF
 
 %build
 %pyproject_wheel