I've been developing my own version string parser for a couple weeks now, in golang.
It's ridiculous to what lengths you have to go to understand which part of a string comes earlier or later.
Simple example: semantic versioning allows "1.2.3alpha" and also 1.2.3-beta", but which one comes first now...
- Is 1.2.3 > 1.2.3omega?
- Is 1.2.3 > 1.2.3beta?
- Is 1.2.3gamma > 1.2.3?
In the Linux world it gets even funnier cause they invented SONAME fields that reflect breaking API changes instead of forcing packages to comply with semantic versioning syntax. Oftentimes there is a package version of e.g. 0.4.7 that has an SONAME of 12.7 on the filesystem.
Add to that the ~prerelease suffix syntax in Debian based distros which are maintained downstream, and all the +buildid or .commithash or -revision123 suffixes and you've landed in string comparison hell.
When I started I would have never guessed that this is such a complex problem to solve in golang.
It's ridiculous to what lengths you have to go to understand which part of a string comes earlier or later.
Simple example: semantic versioning allows "1.2.3alpha" and also 1.2.3-beta", but which one comes first now...
- Is 1.2.3 > 1.2.3omega?
- Is 1.2.3 > 1.2.3beta?
- Is 1.2.3gamma > 1.2.3?
In the Linux world it gets even funnier cause they invented SONAME fields that reflect breaking API changes instead of forcing packages to comply with semantic versioning syntax. Oftentimes there is a package version of e.g. 0.4.7 that has an SONAME of 12.7 on the filesystem.
Add to that the ~prerelease suffix syntax in Debian based distros which are maintained downstream, and all the +buildid or .commithash or -revision123 suffixes and you've landed in string comparison hell.
When I started I would have never guessed that this is such a complex problem to solve in golang.