[Distutils] Setuptools + specifying project's version

[P.J. Eby]

At 03:29 PM 5/9/2011 -0400, Ruslan Spivak wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In 
>http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools#specifying-your-project-s-version
>there is a statement that 2.1-rc2 means you've already released 2.1
>and an example
>
>"""
>....
> >>> parse_version('2.1-rc2') < parse_version('2.1')
>False
>....
>"""
>
>Running the example gives quite the opposite result (setuptools-0.6c11):
>
> >>> parse_version('2.1-rc2') < parse_version('2.1')
>True
>
>and actually it turns out that a pre-release tag 2.1rc2 is equal to
>the post-release tag 2.1-rc2
>
>  >>> parse_version('2.1-rc2') == parse_version('2.1rc2')
>True
>
>Does anyone have any idea why that's the case or is it a bug?

If it's a bug, it's a documentation bug.  Originally, setuptools had 
the behavior described, and I later realized it was a bad idea.  ;-)

I think I skipped updating the documentation at the time, though, 
because there were still versions of setuptools in the field which 
could confuse the two, and thus using a '-' would still be a bad practice.

It might be a good idea to update it *now*, though.  ;-)