Semantic sorting has existed for a long time. GNU coreutils have been able to do a "version sort" for years (eg, "ls -v" or "sort -V"), using the Debian rules w

Semantic sorting has existed for a long time. GNU coreutils have been able to do a "version sort" for years (eg, "ls -v" or "sort -V"), using the Debian rules which also happen to be a superset of semver. "4.0~alpha.1" sorts before "4.0".