Hi, I know Perl is all about diversity but I wonder if requiring a uniform way of providing version numbers of modules on CPAN would be too much of restriction on the freedom of module authors?
I think it would make life easier for tool authors (PAUSE/CPAN.pm/CPANPLUS etc) and downstream distro packagers (e.g. Debian and co.) As far as I can tell there is already an almost universally accepted format of \d+\.\d\d for released versions and \d+\.\d\d_\d\d for development versions. Are there any compelling reasons to keep allowing any type of version numbers? Can the above be officially blessed - or agreed upon - and maybe enforced on some level? e.g. not indexing any module that does not have a version in the given format? Gabor
