versioncmp

A version string comparison library for golang.

While there are libraries for semver, I couldn't find anything that handles "everything".

The reason I wanted this, is another project of mine, called spoon. One of its tasks, is to parse sscoop repository manifest versions, which come from a ton of different developers, each of them bringing their own unqie versioning concept. Isn't that great?

It can't compare version format X

You've got yet another great format? We can try incorporating it. As long as we don't break anything else!

Feel free to contribute your own. However, lack of new tests means I'll close your PR without a comment.

Usage

First, grab the library:

go get github.com/Bios-Marcel/versioncmp

There's currently only a single public function:

fmt.Println(versioncmp.Compare("1.0.0", "2.0.0")) //2.0.0
fmt.Println(versioncmp.Compare("1.0.0", "1.0.0")) //""

How it works

It returns the greater of the two versions.

The concept it uses is to group parts of the version together, depending on which separator was last met. For example 1.0.0-2.5 would lead to the grouping [[1,0,0],[2,5]]. These groups are the compared with the other versions groups. The first group that is bigger, wins.

In addition to the groups, we try to find out whether there's something I call a stability (there's probably a better word, but I don't care). The stabilities are:

• stable
• pre
• rc
• beta
• alpha
• dev

These are sorted from stable to unstable. If the number groups are equal, the stability is used as a second factor.

Options

Currently there are two options. CompareNightly and CompareMeta. Generally nightly versions are always deemed equal. Metadata is always ignored. Even if you wish to compare it, we only have equal or unequal, instead of greater, equal and less.