| Subject: | version attribute should not include TRIAL or RC |
I think the practice of returning "5.12.0-RC0" or "2.001-TRIAL" for
"version" is problematic as these are not valid version strings as
defined by the new "lax" rules for version numbers in Perl 5.12. Thus,
post-processing is necessary before the result of version can be used
with UNIVERSAL::VERSION or version objects. That seems to defeat much
of the purpose of using CPAN::DistnameInfo to standardize things in the
first place.
As I know search.cpan.org does use these extended versions (e.g
perl-5.12.0-RC0), I suggest adding another method to return an informal
version string like that ("extended_version"?) and keeping "version" as
a decimal or dotted decimal. Alternatively, I suggest adding a
"formal_version" or "canonical_version" method to return only the actual
numeric/dotted-decimal part. Either way the behavior should be
documented clearly.
If you indicate which approach you prefer, I'd be happy to work it up
and send you a pull request.
Thank you,
David