diff --git a/github-linguist.gemspec b/github-linguist.gemspec
index 53e32190..9d2f73c1 100644
--- a/github-linguist.gemspec
+++ b/github-linguist.gemspec
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
+require File.expand_path('../lib/linguist/version', __FILE__)
+
 Gem::Specification.new do |s|
   s.name    = 'github-linguist'
-  s.version = '2.10.13'
+  s.version = Linguist::VERSION
   s.summary = "GitHub Language detection"
   s.description = 'We use this library at GitHub to detect blob languages, highlight code, ignore binary files, suppress generated files in diffs, and generate language breakdown graphs.'
 
diff --git a/lib/linguist.rb b/lib/linguist.rb
index ad8337c8..3714b5a0 100644
--- a/lib/linguist.rb
+++ b/lib/linguist.rb
@@ -4,3 +4,4 @@ require 'linguist/heuristics'
 require 'linguist/language'
 require 'linguist/repository'
 require 'linguist/samples'
+require 'linguist/version'
diff --git a/lib/linguist/version.rb b/lib/linguist/version.rb
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..804253f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/linguist/version.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+module Linguist
+  VERSION = "2.10.13"
+end