Next steps

[Eric Timmons]

On 11/17/21 2:38 PM, Robert Goldman wrote:
> On 17 Nov 2021, at 13:31, Robert Dodier wrote:
> 
>     On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 10:45 AM Robert Goldman rpgoldman at sift.info
>     <mailto:rpgoldman at sift.info> wrote:
> 
>         I favor something like this because it would be nice to have
>         prerelease versions of ASDF that perform version checks properly.
> 
>         What I mean is, if we are going to add a feature in version 3.4,
>         right now that would be in a prerelease version with a version
>         number of something like 3.3.5.22
> 
>         It would be a lot better for realistic testing if we could
>         instead use 3.4.0-alpha1 or 3.4.0-1 and have ASDF know that
>         3.4.0-1 comes before 3.4.0, not after.
> 
>     Hi Robert, hi everyone. I haven't been following closely, but while
>     you are working out details, let me just mention that I recommend
>     against version numbers that require special interpretation to
>     discover their ordering, e.g. 3.4.0-1 < 3.4.0.
> 
>     Mostly I'm just thinking that somebody's not going to get the memo
>     (it's usually me).
> 
>     For what it's worth, and all the best.
> 
> I guess that would be an argument for using something more obvious than 
> |-|, like the string |alpha| so |3.4.0-alpha1| or |3.4.0alpha1| instead 
> of |3.4.0-1| since there the meaning should be relatively obvious.
> 
> My feeling is that if a user misinterprets |3.4.0-1|, then shame on me. 
> But if a user misinterprets |3.4.0alpha1| then shame on them.
> 
> I'm not sure how that would align with semver...

Erik already sent out some examples of ordering with semver. But it is 
worth noting that 3.4.0-1 *is* valid semver and the ordering would be 
3.4.0-1 < 3.4.0-alpha

So to prevent misinterpretation of 3.4.0-1, ASDF could either promise to 
always use something like alpha/beta/etc, use something else like PEP440 
(I believe that grammar always requires an alphabetic character for 
pre-releases), or bake its own grammar.

One thing that's nice about the semver grammar is its flexibility. I 
have some scripts that can generate a version string from a git repo 
that lets you easily order versions based on things like when they 
branched off the default branch. But if we want ASDF to disallow things 
like 3.4.0-1, I'm happy to build my own system that uses the new API to 
allow the use of semver strings.

Another option is to choose something compatible with Debian's version 
strings. I'm having a little trouble grokking it at the moment, but it 
seems to be even more freeform than semver and adds an optional epoch 
prefix.

-Eric