When I’m writing a fix to some bugs, I often increment the version and send it to the bug finder to see if my fix works. If I have 1.2.5 and I want to create a beta that will become redundant once I commit my code, should I use 1.2.5-beta or 1.2.6-beta? My concern is that 1.2.6 < 1.2.6-beta so that the string comparison may favour the beta and the bug finder would not get a notification of the stable version being released.
EDIT:
If the string is compared absolutely without taking into account the release type, you could use 1.2.5-fix and then 1.2.6. The problem is also outlined at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Pre-release_versions
If your current plugin version is
1.2.5, and you have a beta version for the next version, it should be called1.2.6-beta. Your user can install it, and when the real1.2.6version is released on the repository, WordPress will notify the user on the Plugins page and let him update.WordPress uses a PHP function called
version_compareto compare version numbers for this purpose. When comparing version numbers, WordPress will recognize them like this:1.2.5<1.2.6-beta<1.2.6I’ve tested this out with a plugin of my own in the repository, currently at version
0.45.11. I changed the version number of the plugin on my own site to0.45.11-beta, and WordPress let me update to0.45.11from the Plugins admin page.You should not be releasing beta versions of plugins you expect to follow up with a non-beta release. Beta is for testing, release it on your website or something, but only do stable releases to the repo unless you plan on keeping the plugin in beta.