[Distutils] version scheme: a case for dropping ".devNNN" and ".postNNN"

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:53:37 +1000, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 2009/6/11 Trent Mick <trentm at gmail.com>:
>> > # My conclusion/opinion
>> >
>> > In so far as the proposed new distutils versioning scheme is to be
>> > used for enforcing/encouraging versions for packages uploaded to
>> > PyPI, I don't believe there is a strong case for including ".devNNN"
>> > and certainly not ".postNNN".
>>
>> +1. That saved me from having to write an email which made this
>> argument, but far less effectively :-)
>
>+1, this is also my position. I didn't see Trent's above message in
>time, but hopefully my different expression will be useful.
>

What .devNNN and .postNNN provide that doesn't seem to be provided for
elsewhere in this scheme is the inclusion of a revision control identifier
(at least for vcs which have small integer revision identifiers) in the
version number.  This information makes it more easily possible to determine
which revision (ie, non-release) of software is being used.

This is why Twisted uses "post releases" (thanks for the summaries, Trent,
I had no idea what a "post release" version was before reading them).

The suggestion seems to be that projects using post releases should instead
just add another component to their version.  This would make the current
version of Twisted 8.2.0.27002.

Jean-Paul