The guidelines for snapshot versioning seem to implicitly assume that a snapshot is always post-release (0.4.1^20200601g01234ae) or post-pre-release (0.5.0~rc1^20200701gdeadf00f).

There are cases, however, where a snapshot really belongs to the development branch for a future release, but there has not been a formal pre-release. If the version number in the code has already been updated for the new release, then it is incorrect to treat the snapshot as a post-release of the old version; it is truly a pre-release snapshot.

Two possibilities I can think of in this case are:

• Allow using ~ instead of ^ before the snapshot information in the Version in this case, e.g.: 0.5.0~20220917g12345bf
• Treat this as a pre-release having an empty name, e.g.: 0.5.0~^20220917g12345bf

The second is not explicitly disallowed by the current guidelines, but not clearly allowed either. The first is simpler. Tests with rpmdev-vercmp verify that both styles sort before any snapshot of a named pre-release, e.g. 0.5.0~rc1^20200701gdeadf00f—for the first style, assuming that the named pre-release begins with a letter—which seems like it would be a desirable property.