[Distutils] recollections of Pycon distutils versioning discussion (part 2)

[Ben Finney]

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn <zooko at zooko.com> writes:

> So far so good.  Now, should the "rational version number spec"

I would like to avoid this term, since version strings do not represent
rational numbers (nor, indeed, should they be interpreted as any kind of
single number).

If we must have a name for it, I propose “consistent version comparison
spec” as less confusing than the above term.

> *also* encourage those of us who use this technique to use the same
> spelling for ".snapshot" / "-r" / ".post"?

This is where I don't think the specification should express an opinion.
Keep it simple and declarative.

> This would not effect any version comparison, but it would be nice for
> us humans if everyone chose the same word when they mean the same
> thing.

It might be nice, but it's not necessary to the specification since
version comparison only needs to be consistent within versions of *the
same thing*, so for the sake of specification it doesn't matter if
different projects choose different tokens.

The specification should provide *examples*, and make those examples
sensible; but don't favour anything that's not meant to be normative.

-- 
 \     “I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at |
  `\   the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour …” —F. H. Wales, 1936 |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney