Here are the steps to follow to create a new notmuch release: 1) Verify that what you want to release is committed. The release process will release the code from the current HEAD commit. 2) 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). 3) Verify that the notmuch test suite passes. Currently this is by running: ./test/notmuch-test And manually verifying that every test says PASS. We plan to fix this to automatically check the results and even to automatically run the test suite as part of a Makefile target described below. 4) 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. 5) Increment the notmuch version in Makefile.local For most releases we'll just increment the minor number. For major milestones of usability we'll increment the major number. Commit this change. 6) Run "make release" which will perform the following steps: * 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.) * Provide some text for the release announcement (see below). If for some reason you lost this message, "make release-publish-message" prints it for you. 7) Increment the notmuch version by adding a .1 micro number, commit, and push. 8) Send a message to notmuch@notmuchmail.org to announce the release. Use the text from the new entry to NEWS.