[Python-Dev] version compare function into main lib

[M.-A. Lemburg]

On 2009-03-27 17:01, Eric Smith wrote:
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>> Correct me if I wrong, but shouldn't Python include function for
>>> version comparisons?
>>
>> On the packaging summit yesterday, people agreed that yes, we should
>> have something like that in the standard library, and it should be more
>> powerful than what distutils currently offers.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> There was no conclusion of how specifically that functionality should
>> be offered; several people agreed that Python should mandate a standard
>> format, which it is then able to compare. So you might not be able to
>> spell it "10.3.40-beta", but perhaps "10.3.40b1" or "10.3.40~beta".
> 
> I got the impression that people are generally happy with what
> setuptools provides for version parsing and comparison.
> 
> Does anyone think that's not a good model?

Instead of trying to parse some version string, distutils should
require defining the version as tuple with well-defined entries -
much like what we have in sys.version_info for Python.

The developer can then still use whatever string format s/he wants.

The version compare function would then work on this version tuple
and probably be called cmp() (at least in Python 2.x ;-).

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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