Currently VS Code/marketplace do not support pre-release versions (like x.y.z-foo) so we must use standard x.y.z numbers.

https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#prerelease-extensions

VS Code's recommendation is to use ODD minor versions for pre-releases. This seems reasonable, and we can put the date in the patch part to make it clearer when the build was made.

• Odd minor versions for pre-release
  • 3.31.x - pre-release
  • 3.32.x - stable
  • 3.33.x - pre-release
• Date in YYYYMMDD format in patch for pre-release
  • 3.31.20211213 - today's pre-release
  • 3.32.0 - normal stable release
  • 3.33.20220115 - example mid-January pre-release

For now, pre-release extensions will be manually built/published and will probably be around half-way through the month, with additional releases as required up until the stable release (these releases will replace normal beta releases, and users will be encouraged to switch to these to help test).