Python installation semver or matching version

[Jaymon]

Many times I want to install Python 2.7.* or 3.8.*. It would be great to have some basic semver stuff, or even specifying a regex or something, so you could do something like:

$ pyenv install --list | grep "^\s*2.7.*"

and take the last matching line. So specifying:

"version" => "2.7.*"

would get checked against the output of pyenv install --list and the last matching value would be the version that is installed.

If I wanted to use semver syntax, Gem::Version might be useful, to find the latest version

Gem::Version.new('0.3.2') < Gem::Version.new('0.10.1')

• Pyenv issue: Switch to the usage of SemVer for the pyenv release tags
• Official Semver docs

[Jaymon]

Using a syntax like 2.7.* means you would only need to run grep against pyenv install --list if there is an asterisk in the version.

[Jaymon]

You need to account for things like:

$ pyenv install --list | grep "^\s*3.*"
  3.4.0
  3.4-dev
  3.4.1
  ...
  3.5.0
  3.5-dev
  3.5.1
  ...
  3.6.0
  3.6-dev
  3.6.1
  ...
  3.7.0
  3.7-dev
  3.7.1
  ...
  3.8.0
  3.8-dev
  3.8.1
  ...
  3.9.0
  3.9-dev
  3.10-dev

Because you probably don't want the -dev build to be installed, or maybe you do ¯_(ツ)_/¯