Guys, let's name early access versions as "x.x.x-aN" or "x.x.x-bN". This will give us transparent version comparison. Serj, thanks for a good point!
As far as upcoming release I suggest releasing "1.5.0-b1" since in my understanding it is very close to final release and is higher than "betta" quality. You can find sample comparisons below. $ java -cp maven-core-3.3.9.jar:maven-artifact-3.3.9.jar org.apache.maven.artifact.versioning.ComparableVersion 1.5.0-ea 1.5.0 1.5.0-b1 1.5.0-a2 Display parameters as parsed by Maven (in canonical form) and comparison result: 1. 1.5.0-ea == 1.5-ea 1.5.0-ea > 1.5.0 2. 1.5.0 == 1.5 1.5.0 > 1.5.0-b1 3. 1.5.0-b1 == 1.5-beta-1 1.5.0-b1 > 1.5.0-a2 4. 1.5.0-a2 == 1.5-alpha-2 -- Yakov
