livecheck version comparison sees -pre suffix as newer than same version without -pre suffix

[Tatsh (Andrew Udvare)]

Using livecheck with this package:

​https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/timewarrior/tags

Portfile is here: ​https://github.com/Tatsh/ports/blob/master/office/timew/Portfile

This package has a -pre tagged version v1.4.2 that is seen as newer than the final release of v1.4.2. The top version under /tags on GitHub is usually the newest, but also -pre should be considered older than a version with the same numbers but without -pre. Same goes for [.-](alpha|beta)[0-9]+?$.

Debug output:

DEBUG: Fetching https://github.com/GothenburgBitFactory/timewarrior/tags
DEBUG: Using CURL options "--append-http-header" "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8"
DEBUG: The regex is "archive/v([^"]+)\.tar\.gz"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.4.2.tar.gz", extracted "1.4.2"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.4.2-pre.tar.gz", extracted "1.4.2-pre"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.4.1.tar.gz", extracted "1.4.1"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.4.0.tar.gz", extracted "1.4.0"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.3.0.tar.gz", extracted "1.3.0"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.2.0.tar.gz", extracted "1.2.0"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.1.1.tar.gz", extracted "1.1.1"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.1.0.tar.gz", extracted "1.1.0"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.0.0.tar.gz", extracted "1.0.0"
DEBUG: The regex matched "archive/v1.0.0.beta1.tar.gz", extracted "1.0.0.beta1"
timew seems to have been updated (port version: 1.4.2, new version: 1.4.2-pre)

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Livecheck works using the vercmp procedures, which just does numeric comparisons of versions. It is not aware of nonstandard suffixes like "-pre" and does not assign any special meaning to them, and I'm not sure that it's appropriate for support for such suffixes to be added. Usually individual ports override the livecheck regex as needed to accommodate that project's particular version numbering strategy. For example in this case you might use

github.livecheck.regex {([0-9.]+)}

to exclude all versions that are not composed solely of numbers and periods.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

See also #55514 for my comments and concerns on the previous request to make livecheck smarter.

[Tatsh (Andrew Udvare)]

Replying to ryandesign:

Livecheck works using the vercmp procedures, which just does numeric comparisons of versions. It is not aware of nonstandard suffixes like "-pre" and does not assign any special meaning to them, and I'm not sure that it's appropriate for support for such suffixes to be added. Usually individual ports override the livecheck regex as needed to accommodate that project's particular version numbering strategy. For example in this case you might use

github.livecheck.regex {([0-9.]+)}

to exclude all versions that are not composed solely of numbers and periods.

This is good enough for me for packages like this. Thanks