To be honest the current version string is the correct version string. We just got into a lazy habit of always using <version>-dev without any of the other stability prefixes so we didn't have to constantly update the nightly build XML files.

Well fine for me. joomla/update.joomla.org#104 I'm not starting to fight about right and wrong any more. More work for you with access to that server ?

Just to give a little more insight here too, as it relates to version comparisons 4.0.0-dev is older than 4.0.0-alpha4-dev, so if you installed 4.0.0-alpha3 you wouldn't be proposed an update to 4.0.0-dev but 4.0.0-alpha4-dev would be available. So it is semantically correct to do things this way, even if it creates a little more work.

I'm not starting to fight about right and wrong any more. More work for you with access to that server ?

Actually, since I've just about got the new Jenkins box running the way I want it (it's been running for a little bit behind the scenes now doing the nightly builds and some of the site deployments), I intend on getting things set up so that Jenkins server can push files over to the update server, then any merge to master would just auto-deploy and the only work left is whoever is updating the XMLs for the releases ?