Bug #105697 for Module-CPANTS-Analyse: new kwalitee metric: distribution version formatting

Mon Jul 06 17:47:47 2015 ether [...] cpan.org - Ticket created

Subject:

new kwalitee metric: distribution version formatting

I was recently talking to the macports folks who create distribution port files for perl modules for macports. They say "version formatting is sometimes an issue for us - particularly versions that use alpha characters (prepending a "v" for instance)." We can easily check for this with CPANTS -- so I propose that we add a metric to check that the distribution version (as in the "version" meta field, as well as the tarball filename) not only passes a version::is_lax() check, but also contains no alpha characters at all.

Mon Jul 06 17:47:56 2015 ether [...] cpan.org - Severity Wishlist added

Mon Jul 06 23:53:29 2015 ishigaki [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On Tue Jul 07 06:47:47 2015, ETHER wrote: Show quoted text

> I was recently talking to the macports folks who create distribution > port files for perl modules for macports. They say "version formatting > is sometimes an issue for us - particularly versions that use alpha > characters (prepending a "v" for instance)." > > We can easily check for this with CPANTS -- so I propose that we add a > metric to check that the distribution version (as in the "version" > meta field, as well as the tarball filename) not only passes a > version::is_lax() check, but also contains no alpha characters at all.

I'm not sure how much this helps other people. If we should always warn an alphabet in a dist version including a prepending "v" (4605 distributions on BackPAN) or even "-TRIAL" (1431), that's fine and we can make has_proper_version in ::SiteKwalitee::DistVersion a bit more strict. If not, and this only helps macports people, I'd rather ask/help them to fix their tools. Thoughts?

Mon Jul 06 23:53:29 2015 The RT System itself - Status changed from 'new' to 'open'

Mon Jul 13 13:26:59 2015 ether [...] cpan.org - Correspondence added

On 2015-07-06 20:53:29, ISHIGAKI wrote: Show quoted text

> > I'm not sure how much this helps other people. If we should always > warn an alphabet in a dist version including a prepending "v" (4605 > distributions on BackPAN) or even "-TRIAL" (1431), that's fine and we > can make has_proper_version in ::SiteKwalitee::DistVersion a bit more > strict. If not, and this only helps macports people, I'd rather > ask/help them to fix their tools. > > Thoughts?

I think we (Toolchain Gang) should write up a document that defines best practices for versions, which clearly describes the caveats of each type of version format. I've heard that the "v1.2.3" format is more harmful than "1.2.3", but I am not able to quantify the difference. Hopefully someone else can! :)