i don't want to speak for roger, but my general understanding over the past few years was that roger typically appeared to run fresher alpha code on a sister relay named moriatoo (https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/5C91CC4554CA2EE1904BA6...) before upgrading moria1.

but at the moment, moriatoo is running 0.2.6.0-alpha-dev and moria1 is running 0.2.6.1-alpha-dev