Here are most of the steps we (maintainers) follow when making a release. * start from a clean, up-to-date git directory. git checkout master; git pull * Run ./configure && make maintainer-clean * Ensure that the desired versions of autoconf, automake, bison, etc. are in your PATH. See HACKING for the complete list. * Ensure that you're on "master" with no uncommitted diffs. This should produce no output: git checkout master; git diff * Make sure your local gnulib directory is up to date. * Run bootstrap: ./bootstrap FIXME: enable excluded programs like arch? to get their manual pages? * Pre-release testing: On at least one SELinux-enabled (enforcing) and one non-SELinux system, run all tests, both root-only and regular. Run *all* non-root tests, including expensive and very expensive ones i.e., run this: make -j1 check RUN_VERY_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes RUN_EXPENSIVE_TESTS=yes Run the root-only tests: sudo env PATH="$PATH" NON_ROOT_USERNAME=$USER make -k check-root * Run "make distcheck" * Manually set the date, version number, and [stable/alpha/beta] on line 3 of NEWS, then do e.g.,: v=7.3 git commit -F <(printf 'version '$v'\n\n* NEWS: Record release date.\n') -a git tag -s -m "coreutils $v" v$v HEAD * Run the following to create release tarballs. Your choice selects the corresponding upload-to destination in the emitted gnupload command. The different destinations are specified in cfg.mk. See the definitions of gnu_ftp_host-{alpha,beta,major}. # "TYPE" must be major, beta or alpha make TYPE * Test the tarball. copy it to a few odd-ball systems and ensure that it builds and passes all tests. * While that's happening, write the release announcement that you will soon post. Once all the builds and tests have passed, * Run the gnupload command that was suggested by your "make major" run above. * Wait a few minutes (maybe up to 30?) and then use the release URLs to download all tarball/signature pairs and use gpg --verify to ensure that they're all valid. * Push the new tag: git push origin tag v * Send the gpg-signed announcement mail, e.g., To: info-gnu@gnu.org, coreutils-announce@gnu.org Cc: coordinator@translationproject.org, bug-coreutils@gnu.org Subject: coreutils-7.1 released [stable] * Approve the announcement here: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/admindb/coreutils-announce * Announce it on Savannah, too: From here: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/coreutils/ click on the "submit news", then write something like the following: Subject: coreutils-7.2 released [stable] The announcement is here: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.announce/49 Then go here to approve it: https://savannah.gnu.org/news/approve.php?group=coreutils * After each non-alpha release, update the on-line manual accessible via http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/ by running the gnu-web-doc-update script.