public class ComparableVersion
extends Object
implements Comparable<ComparableVersion>

Generic implementation of version comparison.

Features:

• mixing of '-' (hyphen) and '.' (dot) separators,
• transition between characters and digits also constitutes a separator: 1.0alpha1 => [1, 0, alpha, 1]
• unlimited number of version components,
• version components in the text can be digits or strings,
• strings are checked for well-known qualifiers and the qualifier ordering is used for version ordering. Well-known qualifiers (case insensitive) are:
  • alpha or a
  • beta or b
  • milestone or m
  • rc or cr
  • snapshot
  • (the empty string) or ga or final
  • sp
  Unknown qualifiers are considered after known qualifiers, with lexical order (always case insensitive),
• a hyphen usually precedes a qualifier, and is always less important than something preceded with a dot.