Python bindings for libversion

Purpose

Python bindings for libversion, which provides fast, powerful and correct generic version string comparison algorithm.

See libversion repository for more details on the algorithm.

Performance

libversion is 10x to 100x faster than other version comparison facilities widely used in Python world.

Facility	comps/sec
libversion.version_compare2	3492.81K
libversion.version_compare	3219.02K
libversion.Version	374.08K
tuple(map(int, (v.split('.'))))	206.02K
cmp_version.cmp_version	189.15K
cmp_version.VersionString	156.42K
distutils.version.StrictVersion	75.00K
version.Version	71.39K
distutils.version.LooseVersion	51.38K
pkg_resources.parse_version	22.26K

Correctness

libversion handles certain complex version cases better than other version comparison facilities. Here are some example cases where others fail:

Test case	libversion	tuple	StrictVersion	LooseVersion	parse_version	cmp_version
1.0 == 1.0.0	ok	incorrect (<)	ok	incorrect (<)	ok	ok
1.2_3 == 1.2-3	ok	fail	fail	incorrect (>)	incorrect (<)	ok
1.2.3 == 1.2-3	ok	fail	fail	fail	incorrect (>)	incorrect (<)
1.0alpha1 == 1.0.alpha1	ok	fail	fail	ok	ok	incorrect (>)
1.0rc1 < 1.0	ok	fail	fail	incorrect (>)	ok	incorrect (>)
1.0 < 1.0patch1	ok	fail	fail	ok	incorrect (>)	ok
1.0.2a < 1.0.2g	ok	fail	fail	ok	incorrect (>)	ok

Note 1: fail means that attempt to compare versions has thrown an exception, usually bacause a library cannot parse specific version string.

Note 2: version module was not able to complete any tests as it's a strict semantic version implementation which require 3 version components. Also, it does not support Python 3 without modification.

Python wrapper features

• Provides API similar to C library, version_compare(a, b) function
• Provides more pythonic (but slower) Version class with overloaded comparison operators

Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• pkg-config
• libversion 2.7.0+

Example code

from libversion import Version, version_compare

assert(version_compare("0.9", "1.1") < 0)
assert(version_compare("1.0", "1.0.0") == 0)
assert(version_compare("1.1", "0.9") > 0)

assert(Version("0.9") < Version("1.1"))
assert(Version("1.0") ==  Version("1.0.0"))
assert(Version("1.1") > Version("0.9"))

assert(Version("0.999") < Version("1.0alpha1"))
assert(Version("1.0alpha1") < Version("1.0alpha2"))
assert(Version("1.0alpha2") < Version("1.0beta1"))
assert(Version("1.0beta1") < Version("1.0pre1"))
assert(Version("1.0pre1") < Version("1.0rc1"))
assert(Version("1.0rc1") < Version("1.0"))
assert(Version("1.0") < Version("1.0patch1"))

License

MIT license, copyright (c) 2017-2018 Dmitry Marakasov amdmi3@amdmi3.ru.