[Distutils] Common version-comparison semantics for peace love and harmony (was: PEP 386 status - last round here ?)

[Ben Finney]

Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> writes:

> That makes me think that a nice add-on to the lib and the PEP would be
> to provide APIs to translate a Python PEP 386 version to a
> Debian/Ubuntu or RPM ones - and any major packaging system out there.
> (whatever scheme we pick)

I'd like to register, once again, the point that this would not *be* a
problem if PEP 386 described a version comparison scheme that simply
works without special keywords. Have each segment compared
alphanumerically, and it will not *need* translation to work with other
packaging systems.

Special keywords are not, I maintain, special enough to break the normal
version-comparison semantics.

-- 
 \      “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too |
  `\      much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.” |
_o__)                                                —Thomas Jefferson |
Ben Finney