On 17 Nov 2021, at 15:12, Eric Timmons wrote:
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
rpgold...@sift.info
<mailto:rpgold...@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.
What might be nice would be to support a *subset* of semver by default
-- not allowing the numerical prerelease flagged with `-` -- but do so
in a way that is extensible.
Here's my rationale: I would like to provide a relatively simple
semantic versioning that is also compatible with automatically detecting
and rejecting ill-formed version strings.
So, for example, we could (by default!) split the version strings by
`#\.` and `#\-` and *reject* any string bounded by `#\.` that is not
numerical.
We could demand, again by default, that the substring following the
`#\-` be of some constrained form: e.g., Greek letter name followed by
optional numeral. For that matter, we could just say "hey, alpha and
beta are enough" and reject anything but those two. That would be a
nice alternative to having a big table of Greek letter names in ASDF!
Finally, for those who want to really go for it, we could add a
`:version-scheme` keyword to `defsystem`, which would initially default
to `:unconstrained`, but then through the standard process of warning
and then erroring, migrate to `:standard` (or perhaps `:asdf`) as the
default, but let anyone who wants to make up their own versioning
scheme. `semver` would be an obvious extension.
Hm. That's a bit more complex than I had hoped, but it would mean ASDF
systems would initially continue to work, it provides for some error
checking, and a path to extension.
