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

[Eric Smith]

Ben Finney wrote:
> 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?

I want to install the latest version of Python. My choices are 3.3.1 
(the released version) and 3.3.1rc1.