[Distutils] Common version-comparison semantics for peace love and harmony

[Ben Finney]

Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
> >> the problem we have is to be able to sort those post and pre
> >> releases with other versions. And this is not possible with a
> >> simple alphanumerical comparison.
> >
> > It is, if the version strings are chosen to fit within such a
> > comparison semantic.
[…]

> How would you propose Python itself (a project that doesn't have
> especially wacky release numbers) specify 3.1.1rc1 in such a scheme?

Since the specification is about version *comparison* semantics, I'd
need to know example version strings that should compare “prior” and
“subsequent” for the version string I'm to propose. Can you give
examples?

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Ben Finney