title: Publish development version of NPM package
body: <p>How can I publish development version of NPM package?</p>
  
  <p>I tried to set <code>"dev"</code> value for <code>version</code> field in <code>package.json</code> but I got an error when publishing it:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$ npm publish
  npm ERR! Error: Invalid version: "dev"
  npm ERR!     at Object.module.exports.fixVersionField (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/node_modules/normalize-package-data/lib/fixer.js:180:13)
  npm ERR!     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/node_modules/normalize-package-data/lib/normalize.js:29:38
  npm ERR!     at Array.forEach (native)
  npm ERR!     at normalize (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/node_modules/normalize-package-data/lib/normalize.js:28:15)
  npm ERR!     at final (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:310:33)
  npm ERR!     at then (/usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:124:33)
  npm ERR!     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/read-package-json/read-json.js:299:40
  npm ERR!     at fs.js:266:14
  npm ERR!     at /usr/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/graceful-fs/graceful-fs.js:103:5
  npm ERR!     at Object.oncomplete (fs.js:107:15)
  npm ERR! If you need help, you may report this *entire* log,
  npm ERR! including the npm and node versions, at:
  npm ERR!     &lt;http://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues&gt;
  
  npm ERR! System Linux 3.11.0-15-generic
  npm ERR! command "node" "/usr/bin/npm" "publish"
  npm ERR! cwd /home/ionicabizau/package-name
  npm ERR! node -v v0.10.24
  npm ERR! npm -v 1.3.23
  npm ERR! 
  npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
  npm ERR!     /home/ionicabizau/package-name/npm-debug.log
  npm ERR! not ok code 0
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which are the closest alternatives?</p>