ansible-galaxy does not install versions with "+" (build metadata) by default

[ktdreyer]

Bug Report

SUMMARY

I've uploaded Git snapshots of my collection to Ansible Galaxy. I'm using the + sign in my version number as described in the semver documentation.

My galaxy.yml looks like this:

namespace: ktdreyer
name: koji_ansible
version: "0.0.159+git.eb835b03"
# ...

I cannot install this, version, though, unless I specify the version number on the command-line.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1. Upload a brand new collection to Galaxy with a version number that uses a "+" sign. For example: 0.0.159+git.eb835b03
2. Try to install the new collection with ansible-galaxy on the command-line.

EXPECTED RESULTS

I should be able to install this version with ansible-galaxy collection install ktdreyer.koji_ansible, without specifying a version number.

ACTUAL RESULTS

$ ansible-galaxy collection install ktdreyer.koji_ansible
Process install dependency map
ERROR! Cannot meet requirement * for dependency ktdreyer.koji_ansible from source 'https://galaxy.ansible.com/api/'. Available versions before last requirement added: 
Requirements from:
	base - 'ktdreyer.koji_ansible:*'

[ktdreyer]

This filtering is happening on the client. From ansible/galaxy/collection.py

from distutils.version import LooseVersion, StrictVersion

...

resp = api.get_collection_versions(namespace, name)

# Galaxy supports semver but ansible-galaxy does not. We ignore any versions that don't match
# StrictVersion (x.y.z) and only support pre-releases if an explicit version was set (done above).
versions = [v for v in resp if StrictVersion.version_re.match(v)]

On python3-libs-3.7.5-1.fc30, the StrictVersion.version_re regex is:

re.compile('^(\\d+) \\. (\\d+) (\\. (\\d+))? ([ab](\\d+))?$', re.VERBOSE|re.ASCII)

[ktdreyer]

I think this means I would have to use version numbers like 0.0.0a159 to be compatible with distutils.version.StrictVersion.

[ktdreyer]

Yeah, the Galaxy server does not accept a version string of 0.0.0a159.

ERROR! Error when publishing collection to default (https://galaxy.ansible.com/api/) (HTTP Code: 400, Message: Invalid version string: '0.0.0a159' Code: invalid)

[ktdreyer]

I found ansible/ansible#64905 that provides more information about this.

The reason that the ansible-galaxy client does not use distutils.version.StrictVersion is because they would have to add a new dependency on https://pypi.org/project/semantic-version/ .

I will continue the discussion there.