[Distutils] Version numbers for module distributions

[Fred L. Drake]

Andrew M. Kuchling writes:
 > 	Disagreement; I'd vote for mechanism, not policy.  For
 > example, recently I went through 3 pre-releases of xml-0.5; they could
 > have been called 0.5a{1,2,3}.  ILU's been at 2.0a{1-12}, and I have no
 > idea if the developers ever plan to go to beta.  Different developers
 > use version numbers differently, in ways that are consistent in the
 > large but inconsistent in small details.  

  I don't see any problem with offering mechanism in the software and
a short set of guidelines in documentation.  Perhaps the docs should
indicate that if the guidelines are not followed, perpetrators will be 
tossed over... er, they should describe how they are using the parts
of the number in their documentation.

 > 	A side note: for the XML package, I think things are getting
 > to the point that I want to create a fake build tree (the blib/ idea)
 > in order to allow running the test suite without having to actually

  On this topic, it may make sense for the xml package to be a
directory within the package, rather than the package toplevel.  So
xml-VERSION.tar.gz would expand to:

	xml-VERSION/
	    xml/
		dom/
		sax/
		parsers/
		utils/
		...
	    doc/
	    README
	    ...

 > perform the installation.  So, is there any implementation work that
 > can be done?

  I think a version number "object" that can handle parsing and
comparison is a clear need and fairly straightforward to implement.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	     <fdrake@acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
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