Handling version numbers and ref sorting

[djhoese]

Currently the references are sorted based on remote (it is a remote or local reference), but this doesn't take into consideration the date or refname of the references. Where this is a problem is with tags that are semantic versions. For example, in my project I have tags v0.7.0 and v0.7.1. By the default sorting of sorted this will process v0.7.0 first. If I identify this version as 0.7 then that means the 0.7 version of my documentation will be based on the older tag which I assume is undesirable in most cases. I think a simple fix might be (reverse the sort and negate the is_remote):

    if config.smv_prefer_remote_refs:
        gitrefs = sorted(gitrefs, key=lambda x: (x.is_remote, x.refname, *x), reverse=True)
    else:
        gitrefs = sorted(gitrefs, key=lambda x: (not x.is_remote, x.refname, *x), reverse=True)

[tfoote]

We have a use case where we're using codenames and not specific versions. There's currently a debate about whether to sort it forwards or reverse alphabetically. It would be great if there was a way to control or override the sort generally depending on the preference of the developer/documentation writer. Just changing the default will make it work better for some cases and worse for others.

[djhoese]

Yeah understood. In the case of code names though, each code name is resolved to a separate output version/directory, right? In the case above my 0.7.x versions need only the newest one to be created. Currently this doesn't work.

Of course having options for all of this would be nice.