Runtime.Version

[Robert Scholte]

Hi,

I'm kind of surprised by the number of methods of Runtime.Version:
http://download.java.net/java/jigsaw/docs/api/java/lang/Runtime.Version.html

Based on my experience with versions I would advice to reduce the number  
of methods.

With Maven we had this interface:
http://maven.apache.org/ref/3.5.0/maven-artifact/apidocs/org/apache/maven/artifact/versioning/ArtifactVersion.html

However, in the end all those separate segments didn't add a thing and are  
actually causing unnecessary complex code in case we were doing other  
implementations with ArtifactVersion. ArtifactVersion is quite an  
important interface in our code, so there's no simple solution to simplify  
this mistake.

I'm really pleased that for Aether (which is now back at Maven as Artifact  
Resolver) it is all reduced to this:
http://maven.apache.org/resolver/apidocs/org/eclipse/aether/version/Version.html

This is all we need: parsing + comparing (+ #toString()). If none of the  
additional methods of Runtime.Version is used *yet*, you should consider  
to remove them.

thanks,
Robert