version_parts() does not allow for pre-release suffixes

[andy-maier]

The regexp in version_parts() does not allow for any suffixes such as "rc1", "a" etc.
See my other comment on parsing the distro files, and make the format of versions consistent.

[nir0s]

This requires some more thinking. version_parts() is meant to provide major, minor and patch/build numbers. We need to standardize this. Let's leave this for later.

[andy-maier]

It seems to me that there is some potential for incompatible changes. So once we declare the project ready, this would be harder to do, for compatibility reasons.

There is one more issue with version_parts(): There are distros that have three parts in the version: major, minor, fixlevel. The fixlevel is not really a build number; it is part of the release and internally there were multiple different build numbers one of which was released under the version major, minor, fixlevel.

On build number: I think the build number is not a subordinate number in the major, minor, fixlevel sequence, but more like an additional identifier, that stands separate. Also, where do we get the build number from? That is not clear to me at all. In the versions of the distros in our unit test cases, I did not see a build number. Do you have examples?

On the suffixes: It seems to me that they should be considered part of the last provided version number. For example: major.minor-suffix, or major.minor.fixlevel-suffix. Their nature is temporary, before the so flagged version becomes final. They could simply show up in the respective part of the version.

[andy-maier]

In order to move forward, I think this one should be left for later.