How to publish a prerelease?

[Archmonger]

The hatch documentation (and CI --help) doesn't make any mentions to how to publish a pre-release. One would assume it would be something like hatch publish --pre but that doesn't exist.

Any advice?

[shreechaturvedi]

There is no hatch publish --pre. Publish just uploads whatever version is already in the project. Make the version a PEP 440 prerelease, then publish as usual.

hatch version rc
hatch build
hatch publish

hatch version rc (also a / alpha, b / beta) turns 1.2.3 into 1.2.3rc0. The publish docs even show a 1rc0 artifact. When you want the final release:

hatch version release

If you set the version yourself, 1.2.3a1 or 1.2.3rc1 in the version source is enough. PyPI treats it as a prerelease from the version string, not from a publish flag.