[Distutils] The "incompatible versions" problem

[Chris Withers]

Hi All,

Do you guys on this lists have any ideas how packages can indicate to 
package managers like setuptools could indicate that if they are 
required by another package, that requirement must be for greater than a 
certain version?

This stems from the "backwards compatibility" discussion for 
zope.interface here:

https://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2009-November/038417.html

Off the top of my head, zope.component could spell it's requirement as:

def setup(
   ...
   incompatible_with='<4.0'
   )

Whereby, setuptools would raise an exception if the following packages 
were installed:

def setup(
   ...
   install_requires=['zope.component']
   )

def setup(
   ...
   install_requires=['zope.component >= 3.4.1']
   )

...while it wouldn't for the following package:

def setup(
   ...
   install_requires=['zope.component >= 4']
   )

Ideas?

cheers,

Chris

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