semver: deprecate rangeMax and rangeMin

[kt3k]

rangeMax and rangeMin were introduced in #3385, but these 2 APIs seem having critical design flaws. I suggest we should deprecate these 2 APIs.

1. In many cases, rangeMax returns invalid semvers.

rangeMax(parseRange("<1.0.0")) returns 0.∞.∞ (0.Infinity.Infinity).
rangeMax(parseRange("<1.1.0")) returns 1.0.∞ (1.0.Infinity).
rangeMax(parseRange("<0.0.0")) returns -∞.∞.∞ (-Infinity.Infinity.Infinity).

These values are non semvers. Exposing them are very confusing.

2. rangeMax ignores prerelease

rangeMax(parseRange("<1.2.3-a")) returns 1.2.2 ignoring prerelease version.

Because of this behavior, the example below returns false, which seems a bug, but there's no clear way to fix this.

greaterThan(rangeMax(parseRange("<1.2.3-beta.20")), rangeMin(parseRange(">1.2.3-beta.10")))

3. rangeMin ignores prerelease version only when the given range doesn't include prerelease.

rangeMin(parseRange(">1.2.3")) return 1.2.4, but actually 1.2.4-0 is smaller than that (and bigger than 1.2.3). On the other hand, rangeMin(parseRange(">1.2.3-a")) returns the correct value 1.2.3-a.0, but the switching of the algorithm depending on the input value seems confusing and arbitrary.

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Note: There's no concern about the compatibility to npm:semver because these APIs are invented by us in #3385.

[timreichen]

I agree, this seems very confusing.

Just a thought about 1. for the record:
Maybe this could be fixed by using something like MAX_SAFE_INTEGER instead of Infinity. But this seems hacky.

[iuioiua]

+1 for this.

Maybe this could be fixed by using something like MAX_SAFE_INTEGER instead of Infinity. But this seems hacky.

Using infinity might be fine to use in the underlying logic.

[timreichen]

In we deprecate these two functions, there is no way to check anymore if a version is bigger/less than a range, because #4273 relies on these two as an alternative. Any thoughts?

[kt3k]

That sounds a valid point. I think if we deprecate these 2 APIs, we need to re-implement gtr ltr equivalents without using rangeMin and rangeMax.

[iuioiua]

Can this now be closed?