gtk2/docs/RELEASE-HOWTO

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.