On Jul 8, 2010, at 9:38 AM, Jens Rehsack wrote: >> Looks like it should have been 2.6.0: >> >> 2.6.0 = 2.006001 >> 2.17.1 = 2.017001 >> >> 2.006001< 2.017001 >> >> Version number suck. And clearly, three-version numbers suck harder. > > I think, the best way out would be a hard consensus and CPAN reindex.
The closest thing to a concensus is represented in David's blog post: http://www.dagolden.com/index.php/369/version-numbers-should-be-boring/ Fortunately, version number parsing is gradually becoming stricter. You can only use strictly-formatted version numbers in `use MODULE VERSION` and `package MODULE VERSION` (as of 5.12). It will be at least 10 years before loosely-parsed version numbers are deprecated, though. And perhaps not then. Besides which, if my META.yml says DBD::Pg: 2.6 It assumes decimal notation (2.600), not three-digit (2.006). It has no way to tell that I really mean the latter. > This might break some things in the first way - but my experience as > Perl module packager for pkgsrc packaging system is, that most authors > do not react until things fail (and many of them do not react then). > > But this will touch the sacred cow of downward compatibility ... > > We can't have both. No, we can't, alas. Best, David
