On 29 November 1999, Greg Stein said:
Don't let Greg dissuade you. In almost all cases, something is better than nothing. The current state of a Python archive (or index) is pretty abysmal.
Keep doing what you're doing! Don't stop! :-)
Umm, yeah, what he said. One True (Meta-)Archive would be best, but Yet Another (Meta-)Archive is better than nothing at all.
I argued the same topic (different approach, tho) on the trove-dev mailing list (archives at www.python.org/pipermail/trove-dev). Basically, I believe the current Internet user is looking for a Freshmeat-style index, rather than a sunsite-style repository. Repositories are passe, indexes are The Right And Just Way. :-)
Again, I *mostly* agree -- meta-archives OK as long as link-checking is rigorously done. And central repositories may be passe and hard to scale, but they sure as heck are convenient once you know you're way around them.
I posted a little version number parser about a year ago, I think. It handles most forms of version numbers, returning a tuple that can be properly ordered (among the software's other releases using that version number pattern).
If you need to parse version numbers, that's the function to use.
That version number parser is lurking in the Distutils distribution (class LooseVersion in module distutils.version). Currently it fails its test suite because we never did work out those differences of opinion on what version numbers mean. ;-) Greg -- Greg Ward - software developer gward@cnri.reston.va.us Corporation for National Research Initiatives 1895 Preston White Drive voice: +1-703-620-8990 Reston, Virginia, USA 20191-5434 fax: +1-703-620-0913