This is no longer a need for Python 2 clients to use the future library in client code nor to pass unicode objects for strings. They are still allowed of course, but Python 2 str objects are now accepted as input into the library without causing bugs. The library’s internal stored values are still Unicode.
Segments whose definitions contain multiple fields now have namedtuple-based values, from which one can access the field values by the fields’ names. See the PythonVersion (suffix segment) properties examples.
All Versions are now immutable; setting segment values with indexing and slicing is no longer supported. One should now make new version objects with different segment values via the replace method. This follows the paradigm of the datetime classes. For example with an object named ‘version’, version[2] = 8 can no longer replace the third segment in place, but version.replace(_2=8) can be used to create a new object of the same type with the new segment value and all other segment values same as the original object.
The default for the re_pattern attribute of SegmentField has been changed to allow field input with leading zeros. By default when the value is rendered, it is normalized to not contain unnecessary leading zeros.
A segment can now be given a name in the SegmentDefinition constructor, which allows the segment value in a Version object to be accessed via a property of that name and may also be identified by that name as a keyword in the constructor and replace().
SegmentDefinition now also accepts an optional separator_re_pattern attribute that can be used to accept (during string initialization) more than the literal separator, which is the normal form (output when rendered) for the separator prior to the segment.
The separator prior to the release1 segment of Pep440Version has been fixed (was a colon) so that if an epoch is specified, it will be followed by the proper exclamation mark when the version is rendered.
An implementation of the X.org version number scheme is now included in the xorg module.
This is the initial release.