What is this?
=============

This is a parser for various "standard" versioning schemes, such as Debian's, semver.org's, Python's, etc.

Why not semantic versioning (semver)?
=====================================

Semver has become very prevalent for people who can use it, and I understand the concern when new standards appear. However semver was designed without regards for some important needs, which is why it is not used by [Debian](https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html), [Fedora](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/TildeVersioning), [PyPI](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0440/#version-scheme), [conda](https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/concepts/pkg-specs.html#version-ordering).

One important problem is the need for **post-releases**. While it is possible for a package author to release a new package with incremented patch number when he fixes a mistake, downstream package maintainer (people packaging your lib for a Linux distribution, the Conda package manager, as binary installers, ...) can't make changes to version numbers without incurring the risk of conflicting with your next upstream version.