[Distutils] [RFC] PEP 345 and PEP 386 updates

[Eric Smith]

Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>> Tarek Ziadé wrote:
>>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 5:20 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
>>>>>> The micro-language should provide a limited number of
>>>>>> variables to use on the conditions:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> python_version = sys.version
>>>>>> sys_platform = sys.platform
>>>>> If we adopt such a micro-language (I'm reserving judgment until I've
>>>>> had more time to read the relevant PEPs carefully), I'd rather see the
>>>>> names match what's in the Python runtime more closely, probably only
>>>>> avoiding the call syntax.
>>>> We could do that as well, yes.
>>> +1 on close names + no call syntax
>>>
>>> but, notice that "python_version" here is:   "%s.%s" %
>>> sys.version_info[0], sys.version_info[1]
>>>
>>> thats why we came up with that name, to disinguish it from sys.version
>>> (that contains more stuff)
>> I think we do need the full version here, so perhaps using
>> sys.version.split()[0] would be better or simply the full
>> version string and then have conditions use >=, <=, <, >
>> only (ie. not =, since that would likely never match).
> 
> Notice that for the comparisons >, < to work, that requires more than string
> comparisons in case we provide the ability to work with rc versions, because:
> 
>>>> '2.6.3rc4' < '2.6.3'
> False
> 
> We said earlier that we could use sys.hexversion to handle this, but otherwise,
> at least for the Python version, we can use the StrictVersion() class
> from Distutils,
> 
> *But* we ended up thinking that it would be better for the first version to keep
> just "==", "!=", "in" and "not in" operators and a MAJOR.MINOR string.
> 
> These are enough just to compare strings, on a limited number of
> versions for Python.

I thought the plan was to stick with major.minor and "==", "!=", "in" 
and "not in" until PEP 386 was accepted, then switch over to having all 
versions (including Python's) be some sort of Version object, at which 
point we can have richer version comparisons, with all of the existing 
uses being compatible.

Eric.