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Using caret over tilde is better since it behaves the same as in npm: https://jubianchi.github.io/semver-check/#/constraint/~3.0 But when this change was introduced in https://github.com/composer/composer/pull/5396, it was not complete.
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Why are unbound version constraints a bad idea?
A version constraint without an upper bound such as *, >=3.4 or
dev-master will allow updates to any future version of the dependency.
This includes major versions breaking backward compatibility.
Once a release of your package is tagged, you cannot tweak its dependencies anymore in case a dependency breaks BC - you have to do a new release, but the previous one stays broken.
The only good alternative is to define an upper bound on your constraints, which you can increase in a new release after testing that your package is compatible with the new major version of your dependency.
For example instead of using >=3.4 you should use ^3.4 which allows all
versions up to 3.999 but does not include 4.0 and above. The ^ operator
works very well with libraries following semantic versioning.
Note: As a package maintainer, you can help your users by providing an alias version for your development branch to allow it to match bound constraints.