[Distutils] dev versions

[Chris Withers]

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com wrote:
> I'm not sure how zooko does this for Tahoe, but with Twisted (with which 
> we don't do "betas" but we do do "pre-releases") if we were to start 
> getting ready for 2.0.0, then we would create a release branch and 
> change the version in that release branch to 2.0.0pre1.  This, of 
> course, complicates the matter. :)  I don't think anyone has considered 
> how our pre-release version numbers sort compared to the rest of our 
> version numbers.  After 2.0.0 final is released, we merge the release 
> branch back into trunk, changing the trunk version to 2.0.0-r54321.

I beg you to make sure that whatever ends up in the python core to do 
with sorting and comparing version numbers takes your use case into 
account. I like the way you do things :-)
(rare I say that about Twisted ;-) )

I'm -1 on "0" or any other special-case singleton version number...

I'm +1 on the branch having a version of 1.6.3~dev after 1.6.3 has been 
released, and I like 2.0.0pre1 too :-)

Moreover, I wish we could just get a bdfl pronouncement on something 
that works for everyone and get on with it :-D

Chris

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