[Distutils] PEP 386 status - last round here ?

[Tarek Ziadé]

2009/11/25 M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com>:
> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
>> Could we extend the pseudo-format of the versions a little to also
>> include variants which use more than just one character and also
>> allow hyphens and spaces to be used for additional clarity ?
>>
>> VERSION_RE = re.compile(r'''
>>     ^
>>     (?P<version>\d+\.\d+)          # minimum 'N.N'
>>     (?P<extraversion>(?:\.\d+)*)   # any number of extra '.N' segments
>>     (?:
>>         [- .]*
>>         (?P<prerel>[a-z]+)        # 'a'=alpha, 'b'=beta, 'c'=release candidate
>>         [- .]*
>>         (?P<prerelversion>\d+(?:\.\d+)*)
>>     )?
>>     (?P<postdev>
>>         ([- .]*post[- .]*(?P<post>\d+))?
>>         ([- .]*dev[- .]*(?P<dev>\d+))?
>>     )?
>>     $''', re.VERBOSE + re.I)
>>
>> The pre-release marker would then be interpreted in alphabetical
>> order, ie. 'alpha' < 'beta' < 'rc'.
>>
>> This minor change would broaden the scope of the scheme somewhat
>> and make it more compatible to what's being used outside the
>> python-dev sphere (esp. with respect to 'c' standing for release
>> candidate... unless you happen to read it as gamma ;-).
>
> ... and even python-dev has switched to "rc" for these:
>
> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0361/
>
>> The added optional hypens and spaces make the versions more
>> readable, IMHO.

The goal of the scheme is to propose a unique standard, together with
the "suggest_rational_version" API that allow transforming an
almost-rational version to a rational version. IOW, having several
ways of defining separators would
make the version scheme loose.  I have the feeling this would have a
negative impact but I don't have a strong example in mind yet.

Now, suggest_rational_version is meant to transform those close-enough
versions strings into working strings,

Example with "rc" vs "c":

>>> from verlib import suggest_rational_version
>>> suggest_rational_version('2.4rc1')
'2.4c1'

Meaning that a package manager could be permissive and use those
almost-rational form with this API. So if we get
suggest_rational_version work with hypens and spaces as you are
suggesting, that could be a solution.

Now, about the "c" choice. "c" was preferred to "rc" here to avoid
using "r" which has a strong Subversion connotation.

Next, hyphens were removed because they are avoided in some systems
like Debian or Ubuntu,  and have a very specific meaning in
setuptools.

from the setuptools doc:

   The algorithm assumes that strings like "-" and any alpha string that
   alphabetically follows "final"  represents a "patch level".  So, "2.4-1"
   is assumed to be a branch or patch of "2.4", and therefore "2.4.1" is
   considered newer than "2.4-1", which in turn is newer than "2.4".



Regards
Tarek