Re: [widgets] Version string

We didn't attempt to provide algorithms for numeric comparison for anything
after the numeric part. Therefore, with our approach, we cannot determine
if "1.1Beta1" is greater than or less than "1.1Beta2".

The only thing we did to address alpha/beta releases was to *suggest* that
the numeric part include a build number. That way, if 1.1Beta1 is build
2045 and 1.1Beta2 is build 2387, then numeric comparison would work if the
version numbers were expressed as "1.1.0.2045 Beta1" and "1.1.0.2387
Beta2".

We certainly could have tried to force the community to always include the
build number (or some other technique that would ensure version number
comparisons would be accurate), but given our target audience (i.e., Ajax
libraries developers), who aren't always good at following rules, we felt
that we would be lucky if we could get them to include any sort of useful
version string, and therefore we tried to formulate rules that would tend
to match the version strings that they were using today (e.g., "1.1Beta1").

Jon




                                                                           
             "Arve                                                         
             Bersvendsen"                                                  
             <arveb@opera.com>                                          To 
                                       Jon Ferraiolo/Menlo Park/IBM@IBMUS, 
             10/27/2008 02:09          public-webapps                      
             PM                        <public-webapps@w3.org>             
                                                                        cc 
                                       "Marcos Caceres"                    
                                       <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>, "Thomas 
                                       Roessler" <tlr@w3.org>              
                                                                   Subject 
                                       Re: [widgets] Version string        
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




On Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:11:20 +0100, Jon Ferraiolo <jferrai@us.ibm.com>
wrote:

> We came up with an approach at OpenAjax Alliance for version strings
> where the string must begin with N.N (or N.N.N or N.N.N.N) but can
> contain arbitrary alpha text after the number value. Then we defined how

> to do numeric comparisons between the leading numeric parts of two
> different version strings.

So, you are allowing something like

   2.6.27.4-foo3

and

   2.6.27.4-foo4

or
   1.2.3.gcc4.qt3
   1.2.3.gcc4.qt4

Is any judgment whether one version in these cases is newer than the
other? If so, which is newer of the following?

1.2.☺
1.2.☻

--
Arve Bersvendsen

Developer, Opera Software ASA, http://www.opera.com/