versioning for custom packages

["Dj Statik" <djstatik@internode.on.net>]

Greetings list,

I am wanting to build custom packages of various utilities that are already
in the Debian archive.

Is there a recommended versioning system I should use while building these
packages?

I thought of using the word "custom" before the version number.

blah-custom.1.0

but dh_make doesn't seem to like non numeric values in the version string.

The version number would also have to be higher than that in the Debian
archive as I wish to distribute the customized packages on to all the
servers on my network, and I don't want them getting overwritten with an
apt-get upgrade

I had a quick look through the maintainers guide on this topic but didn't
seem to find anything about numbering custom packages.

Any suggestions on this subject are most welcome.

Mitchell