Hello, Since I'm hoping to make a release soon, it'd be good to document the procedure I will follow. The following is what I use for coreutils, gzip, diffutils, idutils, parted, cppi and one or two other projects, so I'm hoping it will work for grep, too:
>From 10ab6fb6f239eaef102e71140d425bbca91b12dc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jim Meyering <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 18:01:21 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] doc: document release procedure * README-release: New file. --- README-release | 86 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 files changed, 86 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 README-release diff --git a/README-release b/README-release new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4471977 --- /dev/null +++ b/README-release @@ -0,0 +1,86 @@ +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, 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 one last time. This downloads any new translations: + + ./bootstrap + +* Pre-release testing: + Ensure that make check syntax-check succeeds. + +* 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 2.6 stable + +* 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 stable" 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 NEWS-updating changes and the new tag: + + v=$(cat .prev-version) + git push origin master tag v$v + +* Send the gpg-signed announcement mail, e.g., + + To: [email protected] + Cc: [email protected], [email protected] + Subject: grep-2.6 released [stable] + +* Announce it on Savannah, too: + From here: + https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/grep/ + 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=grep) + + Subject: grep-2.6 released [stable] + + +verbatim+ + ...paste the announcement here... + -verbatim- + + Then go here to approve it: + https://savannah.gnu.org/news/approve.php?group=grep + +* After each non-alpha release, update the on-line manual accessible via + + http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/ + + by running this: + + build-aux/gnu-web-doc-update -- 1.7.0.1.475.gaf89b
