module request: comparing version numbers

[Sam Steingold]

Hi,
some gnulib modules (e.g., gnulib/m4/libunistring-base.m4) have facilities for 
comparing version numbers, e.g., 1.5.22 with 2.2.8.
it would be nice if there were a module (say, version-compare) which would 
export such a facility.
e.g., @VERSION_COMPARE@ would expand to
version_compare() {
  ...
}
which would return 0 or 1 depending on whether $1 is smaller than $2.
Thanks.
Sam.