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 the buildreq list in bootstrap.conf for the complete list. * Ensure that you're on "master" with no uncommitted diffs. This should produce no output: git checkout master; git diff * Run bootstrap: ./bootstrap FIXME: enable excluded programs like arch? to get their manual pages? * Pre-release testing: Ensure that make check syntax-check succeeds. 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" * Set the date, version number, and release type [stable/alpha/beta] on line 3 of NEWS, commit that, and tag the release by running e.g., build-aux/do-release-commit-and-tag 8.1 beta * 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,stable}. # "TYPE" must be stable, 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: v=$(cat .prev-version) git push origin tag v$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-8.0 released [beta] * 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: (If there is no such button, then enable "News" for the project via the Main -> "Select Features" menu item, or via this link: https://savannah.gnu.org/project/admin/editgroupfeatures.php?group=coreutils) Subject: coreutils-0.0 released [beta] The announcement is here: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.announce/54 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 this: build-aux/gnu-web-doc-update