[Fedora-packaging] Version name for prerelease when upstream used date based versions
I am looking a the suggested version name for a prerelease when upstream
uses dates for their versions.
I am close to having a package (colossus) ready, but one sticking point is
that upstream is probably a week or two away from putting up a new public
build (essentially a snapshot they want to recommend to general users). The
code has changed a lot since their last public release, so that a snapshot
now is really much more of a prerelease package than a post release. Some
things have changed from the last public build to make it more suitable
for packaging in Fedora, so packaging that version isn't very practical.
Upstream is considering changing to more normal version names, but probably
won't make such a change before the next public build.
I could hold off on putting the package into rawhide until after they
make the next public build making the issue moot. (I wasn't going to put
the package into a released version of Fedora until then in any case.)
I could also use a current date for the version of the package, but that
won't correspond to any actual release made by the upstream. I could also
use the date of the last public build even though the code has diverged
since then. (I am not sure if the interface has changed much since then
since for my own use I have been running current svn check outs for over
a year and don't use the public build versions.)