Fred L. Drake wrote:
...
Finally, Greg Stein raised the following wrinkle in private email:
I wanted to briefly let you know that Apache modules are typically versioned as: 0.9.3-1.3.3. The first set refers to the module itself. The second set refers to Apache (which is currently at 1.3.3).
This is a dependency issue, and the dependency checking component should be able to deal with version numbers as appropriate. This is how other packaging systems deal with it (to the best of my knowledge, which is not comprehensive ;).
This is bunk. I'm not putting it there for an automated tool! It is there for the *USER* to figure out which one he wants. What about when I publish 1.1.3-2.0.1 and maintain *both*. And I strongly agree with Marc-Andre about staying out of the semantics of the version numbers. I'll use a format for the automated tool, but stay away from *my* semantics. I would also argue very strongly more more flexibility in the format schemes. For example, looking at the RedHat 5.1 distribution, I see a few formats: xzip-161-2.i386.rpm yp-tools-1.4.1-2.i386.rpm xv-3.10a-10.i386.rpm xrn-8.02-7.i386.rpm xpm-3.4j-2.i386.rpm xmorph-1996.07.12-4.i386.rpm xboard-3.2.pl0-9.i386.rpm x3270-3.1.1.6-2.i386.rpm spice-2g6-7.i386.rpm sox-11g-7.i386.rpm rdate-0.960923-4.i386.rpm nfs-server-2.2beta29-5.i386.rpm nenscript-1.13++-11.i386.rpm mailx-5.5.kw-9.i386.rpm dhcp-2.0b1pl0-2.i386.rpm I can draw a number of conclusions from this about types of formats that need to be allowed. But that's a straight-forward exercise. The point is: You have to be MUCH more flexible in what you can take for the version number. You cannot legislate a numbering scheme to the masses. It simply won't work because too many people have an idea of the "right" way to number. As long as you can specify rules for HOW numbers will be compared, then you're okay. For example: 1) a version number has 1 or more numbers separate by a period or by sequences of letters. If only periods, then these are compared left-to-right to determine an ordering. 2) sequences of letters are part of the tuple for comparison and are compared lexicographically 3) recognize the numeric components may have leading zeroes That should be about it. Welcome to Other Peoples' Versioning. Have a nice stay. :-) -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/