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

Eric Smith eric at trueblade.com
Sat Nov 28 12:05:53 CET 2009


Ben Finney wrote:
> Eric Smith <eric at trueblade.com> writes:
> 
>> Ben Finney wrote:
>>> 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.
> 
> And what version string should this compare prior to?
> 
> That is, you want me to propose an example version string X. I'm asking
> for you to tell me corresponding examples of version strings W and Y
> where:
> 
>     W < X < Y
> 
> since the comparison semantics are what we're discussing here.
> 

W = 3.3.0
Y = 3.3.1

If you're going to suggest 3.3.0.99 or some such, I think that won't 
work. It's important that code sees that as 3.3.1.<something>. I've seen 
code that fails when the pre-release versions have a different 
MAJOR.MINOR.MICRO than the final version. I really think we need a 
"subtractive" versioning scheme.

Eric.



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