The current version specification logic in setup-java allows us to "spell" e.g. 14.0.0-ea, but semver version matching and comparison rules are "less than ideal". There are three key problems with the current logic:

1. It does not correctly match to the latest EA build: Semver will use build numbers (in the version forms of e.g. 14.0.0-ea+b28) in precedence comparisons. As a result, the current spelling will match to the first (not latest) ea build in the CDN

• Note: we've started hiding older EA build filenames from the index in the CDN to keep this working for people for now, but this is not a good practice or one we want to keep doing.

1. It does not allow the specification of a specific EA version (e.g. EA b27 vs EA b28). Semver will ignore build numbers (spelled with e.g. +b28), and match an explicitly requested e.g. 14.0.0-ea+b28 to a cdn 14.0.0-ea+b29
2. It does not support pre-release version formats that would allow Features/installer #1 and v2 workflow #2 above to be resolved by changing the CDN file name to fit the existing logic. While the CDN can be populated with e.g. 14.0.0-ea.28, 14.0.0-ea will not match that. And will translated the current logic 14.0.0-ea.28 to 14.0.0-ea.28.x, which will not match (semver does not support .x syntax for pre-release version matching).

To prepare for an improvement, we have started populating the CDN with EA version number forms that semver can validly match and do comparisons on (e.g. 14.0.0-ea.28, 15.0.0-ea.2), but the current logic will not match to those. I will be issuing a pull request (shortly) with suggested logic updates that will correctly work with those new version number forms.= and solve the problems noted above.