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Provide Public API to normalize version parts #1067
Description
As we push users to only use public APIs in packaging one thing I notice is that hatch needs to use the private function _parse_letter_version: https://github.com/pypa/hatch/blob/hatchling-v1.28.0/backend/src/hatchling/version/scheme/standard.py#L98
This is actually reasonable that project management utilities would want to be able to normalize part of a version such as the pre or post-release part without needing or wanting to construct a whole version.
It is even useful for interacting with the __replace__ API which currently only takes the normalized pre-release parts, so you need to normalize them before passing them in.
I have not thought out what a good public API would look like, we could simply make private functions public, or there may be a better approach.
Activity
henryiii commentedon Jan 23, 2026
Would it make sense to either have
.replace, which is.__replace__but with added normalization, or even add normalization to.__replace__, and provide.replace_unchecked(or something like that) if we need a fast path? The normalization might be pretty light weight?notatallshaw commentedon Jan 24, 2026
If that would remove the need to call
_parse_letter_versiondirectly, sure.When I first opened the PR for replace I was intentionally limited on normalization until there was a required use case, but perhaps this is that.