Really don't understand why post about a dev pre-release? It's confusing, what is the goal trying to achieve with this post?
And why not using semantic versioning?
>>> from packaging.version import Version
>>> v = Version("0.0.1-alpha.22")
>>> str(v)
'0.0.1a22'
>>>
0.0.1alpha22 or 0.0.1a22 although that looks alot like pre-release dev level fixes. In which case, 0.0.1a0-dev22
There is no project ever that had 22 alpha releases. That's nuts. Your alpha testers must be really overworked.
Fire the six year old in charge versioning decisions ;-)
Your welcome. Your future user base can thank me later for putting a stop to that atrocity posing as versioning
epoch is used to transition from random nonsense versioning to semantic versioning.
There is no shame/stigma for admitting a mistake and correcting it. Eventhough that epoch will now stick around with the project forever.