Here are the steps to follow to create a new notmuch release. These steps assume that a process (not described here) has already been followed to determine the features and bug fixes to be included in a release, and that adequate testing by the community has already been performed. The little bit of testing performed here is a safety check, and not a substitute for wider testing. OK, so the code to be released is present and committed to your git repository. From here, there are just a few steps to release: 1) Verify that the NEWS file is up to date. Read through the entry at the top of the NEWS file and see if you are aware of any major features recently added that are not mentioned there. If so, pleas add them, (and ask the authors of the commits to update NEWS in the future). 2) Increment the libnotmuch library version in lib/Makefile.local See the instructions there for how to increment it. The command below can be useful for inspecting header-file changes since the last release X.Y.Z: git diff X.Y.Z..HEAD -- lib/notmuch.h Note: We currently don't plan to increment LIBNOTMUCH_VERSION_MAJOR beyond 1, so if there *are* incompatible changes to the library interface, then stop. Don't release. Figure out the plan on the notmuch mailing list. Commit this change. 3) Run "make VERSION=X.Y release" which will perform the following steps: For the X.Y version, we'll generally just increment Y. But for major milestones of usability we're increment X as well. * Compile the current notmuch code (aborting release if it fails) * Run the notmuch test suite (aborting release if it fails) * Check that the notmuch version consists of only two components * Check that no release exists with the current version * Verify that "make dist" completes successfully * Generate the final tar file * Generate an sha1sum file * Sign the sha1sum using your GPG setup (asks for your GPG password) * scp the three files to appear on http://notmuchmail.org/releases * Place local copies of the three files in the releases directory * Create a LATEST-notmuch-version file (after deleting any old one) * Tag the entire source tree with a tag of the form X.Y.Z, and sign the tag with your GPG key (asks for your GPG password, and you may need to set GIT_COMMITTER_NAME and GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL to match your public-key's setting or this fails.) * Push that tag * Provide some text for the release announcement (see below). 4) Send a message to notmuch@notmuchmail.org to announce the release. Use the text provided from "make release" above, (if for some reason you lose this message, "make release-message" prints it again for you.