Use LooseVersion from easybuild.tools in all easyblocks

[appolloford]

No description provided.

[Micket]

I think it's specifically this import that trips up the CI, this is the thing that's used for installed the easyblocks pip package itself.

Really not sure how we fix this though...

[boegel]

Well the easy way out is to make the VERSION a string value, rather than a LooseVersion instance, Same goes for VERBOSE_VERSION, so we don't need to import LooseVersion at all here...

Wherever we are using these constants, we have to change accordingly (like in setup.py, test/easyblocks/general.py in here, and in easybuild/tools/version.py in framework).

[Micket]

@appolloford please drop the str()'s here in setup.py:

easybuild-easyblocks/setup.py

Line 43 in e6f20bf

FRAMEWORK_MAJVER = str(VERSION).split('.')[0]

https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/blob/e6f20bf5af27ba0ad650eba70f8719f09a9faa5c/setup.py#L58C1-L58C26

@boegel I'm really not sure what the heck is going on here:
https://github.com/easybuilders/easybuild-easyblocks/blob/develop/test/easyblocks/general.py#L53

[Micket]

So, I suggested to @appolloford to isort these to get the import in the right place, but perhaps this is a painful list to deal with when merging this into develop later since there were so many places where this wasn't followed strictly.

I tried to see in the isort conf if there was some way to limit it to not change so much, like only sorting on type nor alphabetical, but couldn't find anything like that. :(

[boegel]

lgtm

[boegel]

This is good to go, so I've promoted this from "draft" to "ready to review".

A corresponding change in the framework repo may be needed because both VERSION and VERBOSE_VERSION are not string values rather than LooseVersion instances...