On 17 Nov 2021, at 13:31, Robert Dodier wrote:

On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 10:45 AM Robert Goldman rpgoldman@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...