[Distutils] RFC PEP 386 : Version comparisons

[Tres Seaver]

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Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Tres Seaver<tseaver at palladion.com> wrote:
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>> Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>>
>>> back to that discussion, after re-reading all the threads I have a proposal :
>>>
>>> 1- let's add as we said "install_requires" in PEP 345 and describe in
>>> it that people can define requirements,
>>>   but without giving them rules for the version schemes.
>>>
>>>   We will just write in that PEP that it's up to the *dependency
>>> manager* (pip, setuptools, zc.buildout, etc)
>>>   to provide a cmp() for the version.
>>>
>>>   The only rule will be that each dependency is described like this :
>>>
>>>      dist_name [<|>|==|!=|>=|<=] version
>>>
>>>   where version is free and dist_name in [a-zA-Z0-9]
>>>
>>> 2- let's drop PEP 386 completely
>> - -1.  I would rather exclude some use cases (post releases), than drop
>> standardization altogether.
> 
> Would you be OK to say in PEP 345 that a suggested tool to compare
> versions could be
> verlib (released as a third-party software), but that any system could
> also be used to compare versions ?

The purpose of defining the 'Requires-Dist' field in PEP 345 is to allow
for a standardized way of spelling dependences.  If we don't standardize
on the versioning, then we won't have gained any ground:  we might as
well punt and keep using setuptools, and *forbid* putting versions into
'Requires-Dist' at all.

> So we can move on and propose the PEP 345 change unindependantly from
> a version comparison tool.

I don't understand why we can't just settle on the reduced set:  the
exotic cases aren't supported today (in distutils), and are mappable
onto the verlib case with some effort.



Tres.
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Tres Seaver          +1 540-429-0999          tseaver at palladion.com
Palladion Software   "Excellence by Design"    http://palladion.com
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