We (me and a bunch of my Zope friends) find that we'll often want version specifications of the form: project_name >=Vdev, <V+1dev (e.g. "foo >=1dev, <2dev") We think this is so common that we'd like a short-hand way of spelling it. I'll note that I'm not even sure I got the spelling above right. The intent is to request version 1, meaning any release of version 1. I think that's what I spelled above, although I'm not sure. If I got it wrong, maybe someone will correct me. Aside from the verbosity of the spelling above, I think the difficulty in spelling it is a strike against it. Note that a naive spelling: "foo >=1, <2" is wrong because it excludes pre-releases of 1 and includes pre-releases of 2. I propose that a valid version that ends in a number and that isn't preceded by an operator be a valid version specifier and be interpreted as a range. So, assuming that I know how to spell the range, a specification of: project_name V (e.g. "foo 1") would be equivalent to: project_name >=Vdev, <V+1 (e.g. "foo >=1dev, <2dev") This would work with multi-part versions, so "foo 1.2" would be equivalent to "foo >=1.2dev <1.3dev". Note that this could be combined with other version specifiers. For example, to require any version 1 or 2 of foo or versions 3.2 final or later: foo 1, 2, >=3.2 Also note that any version will do, so: foo 1.2a1 would be equivalent to: foo >=1.2a1dev <1.2a2dev And note that versions that don't end in numbers wouldn't be valid version specifiers, so: foo 1a would not be a valid specifier. Thoughts? Jim -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org