Summary

Egg spec's version format is stricter than release-info's

Metadata

Description

= Problem =

`chicken-install` strictly validates the `version` property of egg specs (i.e. what goes into `.egg` files) according to the documented format:

 Specifies version string for this egg. `STRING` should have the format `<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCHLEVEL>`, where only the `<MAJOR>` part is mandatory.

However, the same validation does not apply to eggs released through the central egg repository. Here, the version specified in the `.release-info` file is taken verbatim. This means it's not possible to install an egg from a local source directory when its version doesn't match the stricter egg spec format.

= Proposed solution =

Since there are already a lot of egg releases in existence which don't match the egg spec (e.g. `fmt` version `0.8.11.3`), enforcing the same strict format for `.release-info` appears too disruptive a change. Instead, we should make the egg spec's format less strict, effectively allowing any string as version.

= CHICKEN 6 =

For C6, we could still consider enforcing the strict format everywhere.

= Reproduction =

 svn checkout https://anonymous@code.call-cc.org/svn/chicken-eggs/release/5/fmt/tags/0.8.11.3
 cd 0.8.11.3
 csi -e "(write (cons '(version "0.8.11.3") (read)))" < fmt.egg > fmt.egg.new
 mv fmt.egg.new fmt.egg
 chicken-install

Output:

 Error: egg information item has invalid structure: (version 0.8.11.3)