A simple rust library for managing versions of a program compiled using Cargo.
The from_str function is based on the one by nulldatamap, who has a very similar crate but without de/serialization.
Because I this is my third time doing it from scratch and I prefer having a separate crate that is well-tested and standalone.
This crate is useful for transmitting/receiving/saving data from a rust application: You save up the version together with the data and that lets you compare the compatibility of the programs.
Why not use nulldatamap's "version" crate instead of this?
His implementation does not have de/serialization nor the ability to compare versions. I also think that mine is slightly more convenient.
Why not make a PR to nulldatamap's "version" crate?
Because I think he was going for minimalism and simplicity, while mine leans more towards comfort and completeness.
Of course this is still very minimalistic, it's just a version struct after all, but nevertheless it's fundamentally different from his implementation (except for the from_str function as mentioned).
So why would I use nulldatamap's "version" crate?
As mentioned, his is leaner. His version will compile faster (Serialize/Deserialize traits add compilation time) and weigh less.
I implemented a custom serializer and deserializer, so that instead of being serialized as:
{
"major": 1,
"minor": 0,
"patch": 0
}It will serialize as 1.0.0. This makes much more sense for including it inside another struct and serializing it.