[Distutils] Setuptools feature request: simplified version specification

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 02:09 PM 7/6/2007 -0400, Jim Fulton wrote:
>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?

I'm not sure what I think of ' ' as the operator.  This change would 
also have to be an 0.7 feature, as any package that uses it will be 
dependent on having a setuptools version that understands it, at 
least in order to build an egg.  (We could have egg_info write the 
expanded forms, so that the built eggs' dependencies would be 
comprehensible to older versions.)

I'm also not sure that '1a' can't/shouldn't be a valid specifier, 
although I suppose it would mean being equal to either ">= 1a.dev, 
<1b.dev" or ">= 1a0dev, <1a1dev", both of which are a little weird.  :)