>>>>> On Wed, 2 Dec 2015, Alexis Ballier wrote:

> What's the point, need or advantage in moving this to all-ebuild-scope?

> Usually eclass refactor/api cleanup are done in a -r{n+1} while
> deprecating -rn. This would have the advantage that you can quickly
> post a complete implementation and get wider reviews.

A proof-of-concept implementation for the two version manipulation
functions is here:
https://482170.bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=418072
Add some comments and you'll have a working eclass. :)

Some details are still to be discussed, e.g. what should be the
behaviour if the version string starts or ends with a separator?

Also version_test is missing, but the idea there was to avoid
redundancy and use the implementation that already exists in the
package manager (which does version comparison all the time). This is
one of the reasons for moving it to the package manager.

Ulrich