Including both `production' and `alpha' releases of a package

[Remco van de Meent <remco@debian.org>]

Hey,

I have two packages of which I'd like to include two versions in the potato
distribution, at least temporarily: majordomo and pciutils.

There is an alpha version of the long-awaited majordomo 2.x available in a
CVS-tree, which I'd like to package if possible. On the pciutils package:
work is currently being done on the pciutils 2.x release, currently numbered
as 1.99.x.

As said, I'd like to include both the official release and the alpha release
of those packages in the distribution, but I'm not sure how to do it. Of
course, a possibility is to create two packages, package_x.x.x.deb (which
currently in the distribution; the production release) and
package2_x.x.x.deb, containing the alpha release, and have those packages
Conflicts/Replaces each other.

But there is one, in my opinion, disadvantage in doing it that way: when
those alpha releases get production releases, I would like to get rid of the
current production releases, but won't stick with the package2_x.x.x.deb
naming scheme, I'd like to have them called package_x.x.x.deb.

What is the most nice way to solve this issue? Should I do it like said
above, or differently (for example renaming the current production release
to package1_x.x.x.deb and the alpha release to package_x.x.x.deb right now)?


Comments appreciated :)


Thanks,
 -Remco