Hello! I have read the setuptools documentation and have tried out the parse_version comparison, and it turns out that the documentation says is just wrong. I am using version 0.6c8 of setuptools.

The documentation says, quoting: "Don't use - or any other character than . as a separator, unless you really want a post-release. Remember that 2.1-rc2 means you've already released 2.1, whereas 2.1rc2 and 2.1.c2 are candidates you're putting out before 2.1". It also shows a little example for that:

...

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parse_version('2.1-rc2') < parse_version('2.1')

False

While this sounds pretty weird(how can a rc be after the release?) but also logical if you just consider any character but "." to be post-release, which you can do, but do not have to. Still if they say this is the rule it is okay, although I would not quite agree with that, as many people use underscores or dashes as a separation.

So what the real problem is, is that the documentation says things that are untrue with at least the latest version. As said before I have setuptools 0.6c8 and the behaviour is not like the documentation says in any way. Here is a little example:

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parse_version("2.1-rc2") < parse_version("2.1")

True

Notice the difference? It's exactly the *opposite* of what the documentation says. I really ask you to correct this issue as it might confuse new users.

The documentation I mean can be found at http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools, if it is not done by you or you cannot edit it, I apologise and will send another email to its maintainer, but as I could not find out who maintains this site, I just assumed that you, as the maintainer of setuptools are maintaining the documentation.

Thanks in advance for your time reading this and correcting the documentation.

Best regards, Florian Mayer