[Distutils] "Stable" versions

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 06:44 PM 12/16/2008 -0600, Ian Bicking wrote:
>I've received a request that pip be able to be restricted to 
>"stable" versions.  It was suggested some kind of --alpha-ok or 
>--beta-ok option, but this seems crude.  I'd rather have it be part 
>of the requirement. Maybe Package==stable?  But there's also reason 
>to do something like Package>=2.0,stable.  So while pkg_resources 
>can parse Package==stable easily enough, it's not by itself really 
>expressive enough (I suppose Package>=2.0,==stable actually works okay).
>
>Also, there needs to be a definition of what versions are 
>"stable".  And maybe a distinction between beta/rc and development, 
>though I'm less worried about that.  Are there definitions of this?

I would suggest an option that sets a minimum allowable alphanumeric 
code, e.g. "b" to require beta or better, "c" for release candidate, 
etc.  It's easy to scan a parsed version for pre-release tags that 
match.  Setting such an option to "final" would reject any version 
containing a pre-release tag.