[Distutils] Does PEP 0440 allow omitting the separator for development releases?

[Christopher Wilson]

(I posted this to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33849399/does-pep-0440-allow-omitting-the-separator-for-development-releases <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33849399/does-pep-0440-allow-omitting-the-separator-for-development-releases> and was recommended to send an inquiry to this mailer)

PEP 0440 <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0440/> includes the following two statements which on first glance seem to be contradictory:

Development releases allow a . , - , or a _ separator as well as omitting the separator all together. The normal form of this is with the . separator. This allows versions such as 1.2-dev2 or 1.2dev2 which normalize to 1.2.dev2 .

and

Note that devN and postN MUST always be preceded by a dot, even when used immediately following a numeric version (e.g. 1.0.dev456 , 1.0.post1 ).

Is the 2nd statement true for developers of Python distributions?  Or is it stating that the version (once normalized) must always be preceded by a dot?

Thanks,
Chris
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