I have attached a proposed patch for this feature request to the tracker 
issue, which implements the feature as described in the tracker.  
Passing an '--allow-dev' flag to easy_install will tell setuptools to 
accept qualifiers in the versions of the projects(returns the behavior 
to its previous state).

Chris Galvan wrote:
> <pre wrap>
> New submission from Chris Galvan &lt;cgalvan@mail.utexas.edu&gt;:
>
> Currently there is no ability to declare a preference for a release of a
> project.  For example, I'd like to say my project requires "a release of
> foo &gt;= 2.0, &lt;3.0".   I'd then like easy_install/setuptools
> to only pick releases (no qualifiers of any kind alpha, beta, dev, etc.)
> of 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, ....   As a further example, it should
> totally ignore '2.5a1' and '2.6_r15669' and instead would fetch '2.2' 
> if it
> existed in the same repository.
>
> It would be nice if this was the default behavior unless the user 
> specified an
> additional flag to accept qualifiers(which would return the behavior 
> to its
> previous state).  Also, it would fall back on eggs with qualifiers if no
> releases were found.
>
> ----------
> messages: 48
> nosy: cgalvan
> priority: feature
> status: chatting
> title: Prefer release versions of projects
>
> _______________________________________________
> Setuptools tracker &lt;setuptools@bugs.python.org&gt;
> &lt;http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue25&gt;
> _______________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG@python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>
> </pre></body>
> </html>
> </html>

Currently there is no ability to declare a preference for a release of a 
project.  For example, I'd like to say my project requires "a release of 
foo >= 2.0, <3.0".   I'd then like easy_install/setuptools 
to only pick releases (no qualifiers of any kind alpha, beta, dev, etc.) 
of 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, ....   As a further example, it should 
totally ignore '2.5a1' and '2.6_r15669' and instead would fetch '2.2' if it
existed in the same repository.

It would be nice if this was the default behavior unless the user specified an
additional flag to accept qualifiers(which would return the behavior to its
previous state).  Also, it would fall back on eggs with qualifiers if no
releases were found.