# from Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes
# on Wednesday 22 April 2009 13:05:
>> It's quite acceptable for the value in META.yml to be a normalised
>> different string to what is in the module.
>
>the two possible purposes are 1) comparison ... and 2) display.
Yes. META.yml should be a very convenient way to get a definitive
distro version number, making it very likely to be used for display.
>...[for display] a normalized version is unacceptable, in my view.
I imagine that you would therefore find the META.yml spec unacceptable
if it were normalized.
Floats have a single, unambiguous tuple representation which yields to
normalization. But, float users complain, whereas tuples do not have
an unambiguous float representation, so META.yml must support them.
But it cannot be simple if two people want two different things and both
are going to be happy. Effectively, the third person (implementor)
gets to be unhappy. (Ironically, back where this thread started.)
Or, to put it another way, trying to normalize versions as required by
the tuple-endians in META.yml will lead to non-compliant META.yml's
written by stubborn or ignorant float-endians. Meanwhile, the
integer-endians will redefine the whole thing in JSON and the
string-endians will come up with something in a .ini format.
Please let me know when we've got this solved. I'll pick you up on my
unicorn and help write the code.
--Eric
--
"Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse."
--Murphy's Corollary
---------------------------------------------------
http://scratchcomputing.com
---------------------------------------------------
