How to do a GTK+ release? ========================= Make sure you have suitable versions of autoconf and libtool. Also make sure you have the following packages installed with all their dependencies: * gtk-doc * docbook-utils Without those packages make distcheck will *not* pass. 0) Blow away your gtk+ directory, check a new version out 1) autogen and build it, make sure to enable docs by specifying --enable-gtk-doc --enable-man 2) Update NEWS based on the various ChangeLog files; follow the format of prior entries. This includes finding noteworthy new features, collecting summaries for all the fixed bugs that are referenced and collecting all updated translations. Also collect the names of all contributors that are mentioned. We don't discriminate between bug reporters, patch writers, committers, etc. Anybody who is mentioned in ChangeLog gets credits, but only real names, not email addresses or nicknames. 3) In particular, if this is a major, stable, release, verify that README.in contains the relevant release notes and that the required versions of dependencies in INSTALL.in are in sync with configure.in. 4) Verify that the version in configure.in has been bumped after the last release. (Note that this is critical, a slip-up here will cause the soname to change). 5) Make sure that make check is happy (If you don't do it here, make distcheck will also catch it, but it is kind of disheartening to see make distcheck fail due to an extraneous symbol after watching it build the docs for an hour...). Typical problems to expect here (depending on whether this is a devel snapshot or a stable release): * forgotten source files * new symbols missing from .symbols files * symbols that are exported by should be private (static or _-prefixed) * symbols that cause PLT entries. This is either caused by using a in the same library function without including the header or by using a function from a different library, which is not yet allowed by the filter in pltcheck.sh 6) If this is a devel release, make sure that the docs for new symbols are in good shape. Look at the -unused.txt files and add stuff found there to the corresponding -sections.txt file. Make sure that all new symbols have proper Since: tags, and that there is an index in the main -docs.sgml for the next stable version. 7) Add === Released 2.x.y === at the top of all ChangeLog files 8) make distcheck 9) Fix broken stuff found by 8), repeat 10) svn commit; you'll have a bunch of po file changes, ChangeLog updates, and maybe some doc changes too 11) If 10) fails because someone else committed inbetween, curse, svn up, fix conflicts and go to 8) 12) Now you've got the tarball. Check that the tarball size looks reasonable compared to previous releases. If the size goes down a lot, likely the docs went missing for some reason. Or the translations. If the size goes up by a lot, something else may be wrong. 13) Tag the release. The command for doing that looks like svn cp svn+ssh://matthiasc@svn.gnome.org/svn/gtk+/branches/gtk-2-12 \ svn+ssh://matthiasc@svn.gnome.org/svn/gtk+/tags/GTK_2_12_10 14) Bump the version number in configure.in and commit this change with a ChangeLog entry 15) Upload the tarball to master.gnome.org and run install-module to transfer it to download.gnome.org. If you don't have an account on master.gnome.org, find someone who can do it for you. The command for this looks like scp gtk+-2.12.10.tar.gz matthiasc@master.gnome.org: ssh matthiasc@master.gnome.org install-module gtk+-2.12.10.tar.gz 16) Get the bz2 tarball and the .md5sum files back from master.gnome.org You can probably also create it locally, but I've experienced md5 mismatches when doing so 17) Go to the gnome-announce list archives, find the last announce message, create a new message in the same form, replacing version numbers, commentary at the top about "what this release is about" and the Summary of changes. 18) Send it to gnome-announce-list, gtk-list, gtk-app-devel-list and gtk-devel-list. Set reply-to to gnome-hackers. 19) Add a link to the release announcement to www.gtk.org which lives in the gtk-web cvs module.