[Patrick Lauer] > 1.0_pre20120503 maybe That'd be wrong if you expect a real _alpha, _beta or _pre of the given version in the future. I think in that case you'd need something like 1.0_alpha_alpha20120503 or 1.0_alpha_pre20120503. There's something to be said for imposed structure, but in this case I'd have to side with the more general and flexible ~ syntax. And yeah, pretty happy to see rpm adopt it now too.