From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2006-08-04T04:22:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Next Major Version (was Re: Different semantics of Proc and method call -- bug or feature?)

On 8/3/06, James Edward Gray II <james@grayproductions.net> wrote:
> On Aug 3, 2006, at 10:26 AM, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>

> >> The version letters will be stay in one letter each, so that 1.a will
> >> be more likely than 1.10.

> > I hesitate to ask YOU this, but are you really sure you want to go
> > that way.
> >
> > Almost every software package I've run across keeps each level of the
> > version "number" as a number, so 1.10 would be much more in line with
> > standard practice than 1.a
>
> But it can't be compared properly using Ruby operators:
>
>  >> "1.8.5" < "1.10.0"
> => false

Ah, but doing the comparison correctly in Ruby isn't that hard,  in a
few minutes I came up with:

irb(main):023:0> class Version
irb(main):024:1>    include Comparable
irb(main):025:1>
irb(main):026:1*    def initialize(string)
irb(main):027:2>        @value = string.split('.').collect { | i | i.to_i }
irb(main):028:2>    end
irb(main):029:1>
irb(main):030:1*    def <=>(another)
irb(main):031:2>        @value <=> another.to_ary
irb(main):032:2>    end
irb(main):033:1>
irb(main):034:1*    def to_ary
irb(main):035:2>        @value
irb(main):036:2>    end
irb(main):037:1> end
=> nil
irb(main):038:0> Version.new("1.8.5")
=> #<Version:0xb7d728e8 @value=[1, 8, 5]>
irb(main):039:0> Version.new("1.8.5") < Version.new("1.10.0")
=> true

I'd strongly suggest, that it's much better for Ruby if it tries to
stay in line as much as possible with how things are done in the open
source community.

There's a lot of software outside of Ruby which depends on having
versions being a tuple of numbers.  Since Ruby makes it easy to meet
things like that more than halfway, I think that it's better to do so.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

IPMS/USA Region 12 Coordinator
http://ipmsr12.denhaven2.com/

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