Java Edition version history/Development versions

Starting in the period between Beta 1.7.3 and Beta 1.8, Mojang publicly releases testing versions of the full update in order to get major feedback, especially for bug reporting, so that the official update is considerably more stable. While these versions were public, they were not auto-installed by the game and are completely optional.

Most of these updates follow the name-suit of "Pre-release" not only by reference but on the version tags as well.