package version numbering

[Brad Bell]

I maintain a package for which the version numbering system may need to 
be changed.

The original fedora package corresponds to a version of the subversion 
trunk which uses year, month and day for its version numbering, to be 
specific, 20071229. On the other hand, when a stable version is copied 
from the trunk it gets a new major number, minor number, and bug fix 
number, for example 2.3.0. (For reasons I do not wish to go into, this 
numbering system could not be used for the original fedora version, but 
it has been fixed so it can be used for future fedora versions.)

If I use the new version system, the next version will be 2.3.0. Will 
this create problems because the old version number 20071229 will be 
considered greater than the new version number 2.3.0 ?

As an alternative, I have tried to use the setup section of the spec 
file to change the version number, which comes with the upstream source, 
from 2.3.0 to 20080306. The problem with this approach is that the 
upstream source tarball unpacks to the directory
    $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{name}.2.3.0
and rpmbuild expects it to unpack to the directory
     $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{name}.20080306
Is there a way around this problem ?