1.00rc0 Personally, when I see a version number like that, I'm never sure what it means. Probably the first rc leading up to 1.00, but maybe it is an rc for 1.01 after 1.00. And suffixes sort badly in long lists (see, e.g., http://ftp.isc.org/isc/bind9/). Anyway. Not trying to change your ways, but since you raised the subject, tossing in my gratuitious opinion, sorry.
gnits standard gnits is not a standard of any kind. It was a small group of GNU friends who, some 20+ years ago, wanted to expand on the GNU coding standards (which were not being actively maintained at the time, among other reasons). One of us was Tom Tromey, writing automake at the time. So he included "support" in automake for the extra gnits checks we were thinking about. That is all. If you don't like it, don't use it. No harm will befall you. doesn't allow non-numeric suffixes... Because it's not what rms recommended. That simple. As you may remember, we used to use 1.7a, 1.7b, ..., leading to up a 1.8 release. Someone complained about it, can't remember who, maybe Debian, but anyway, rms devised the .90, .91, ... method to accommodate. And since it's just a version number, many maintainers were happy to just go along with the new program. k