My rationale for having some *suggested guidelines* is that most developers spend several years groping in the dark trying to figure out how to assign version numbers to their software. Experienced hackers eventually figure it out, and really smart, far-thinking hackers just "get it" immediately and come up with a system that will work for them henceforth and forevermore. I think most people, though, would benefit from a little friendly advice informed by the many decades of collective experience that will inform the "How to Develop and Distribute Python Modules" document that will come of all this.

The problem I have with this is that the many years of collective experience only shows the common mechanisms are grossly inadequate. After all, many years of collective experience shows the world is flat. Truth is not an issue of consensus. Neither is doing version control anything to do with collective experience with old, broken, paradigms.

As long as we can a) explain the syntax, and b) write code to parse and compare version numbers, then any proposal is valid. This one sounds valid.

I don't agree. This sounds like "I'm Ok, Your're Ok". The only 'valid' scheme is one which works. There are no such schemes, none of them come even close to working. By FAR the best scheme is the Microsoft Active Update mechanism, because it figures it all out, and installs updates on demand. In my opinion. :-)) ------------------------------------------------------- John Skaller email: skaller@maxtal.com.au http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller phone: 61-2-96600850 snail: 10/1 Toxteth Rd, Glebe NSW 2037, Australia