What Is a Pre-release Version?
A pre-release version is a semantic-versioning release marked as not yet stable by appending a hyphenated label, such as a release-candidate or beta tag. Pre-releases sort below the corresponding stable version and are normally excluded from version ranges unless explicitly opted into. They let maintainers ship early builds without affecting standard installs.
Why it matters
Because resolvers skip pre-releases by default, publishing a beta does not accidentally upgrade everyone on a caret range. Teams opt in deliberately to test upcoming releases in CI before they go stable. Understanding the ordering rules matters when a pipeline must accept or reject pre-release builds.
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