Re: Take care with version numbers (eg DBD::Pg)

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