meta: add support for alpha prerelease tag

[aduh95]

Refs: nodejs/Release#1154

There would be more work needed on the tooling (i.e. NCU), but let's see first if we have consensus on the process.

[nodejs-github-bot]

Review requested:

• @nodejs/tsc

[Renegade334]

So, under this schema, alpha versions would be named A.B.C-alpha.D.E.F? Would it not make more sense to have a single alpha counter?

[aduh95]

Would it not make more sense to have a single alpha counter?

Why? What would be the upside?

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 89.70%. Comparing base (18f938d) to head (fa0ef1a).
⚠️ Report is 1 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main   #63135      +/-   ##
==========================================
+ Coverage   89.67%   89.70%   +0.02%     
==========================================
  Files         712      712              
  Lines      221251   221251              
  Branches    42393    42390       -3     
==========================================
+ Hits       198413   198464      +51     
+ Misses      14681    14622      -59     
- Partials     8157     8165       +8     

see 50 files with indirect coverage changes

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.
• 📦 JS Bundle Analysis: Save yourself from yourself by tracking and limiting bundle sizes in JS merges.

[RafaelGSS]

I wouldn't include MINOR or PATCH for Alpha. Possibly, we should only have:

#define NODE_IS_ALPHA_RELEASE 0
#define NODE_ALPHA_MAJOR_VERSION 0

and increment NODE_ALPHA_MAJOR_VERSION on every release until LTS.

[aduh95]

Why? What would be the upside?

[RafaelGSS]

It's simpler. We won't need to maintain a guarantee that v27.0.0-alpha.2 won't break v27.0.0-alpha.1 users, as it would need to be guaranteed if we decide to ship v27.0.0-alpha.1.1.0 on top of v27.0.0-alpha.1.0.0

[RafaelGSS]

Note that starting simpler would allow us to go to your suggested model if we feel the need. The opposite is not true.

[aduh95]

The opposite is not true.

I don't think so, either we need to pick a system and stick to it, either we can change if we feel the need. I don't see why we could go from -alpha.1 to -alpha.1.0.1 and not from -alpha.1.0.1 to -alpha.2

[Renegade334]

If we seek to provide semver semantics within the alpha phase, then we've just re-invented the old release model IMO. May need discussion, but I think it makes more sense to have the alpha versioning be linear, with no undertaking to provide any non-breakage guarantees between any two alpha builds. (I imagine that would make things significantly more straightforward for releasers as well!)