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.
Make sure that gtk-doc is the latest released version.


 0) Go back to a pristine working directory. With git, this works:

    git clean -f -x

 1) autogen and build it, make sure to enable docs by specifying
    --enable-gtk-doc --enable-man

 2) Update NEWS based on the content of git log; 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) Update the pot files and commit the changes:

    make -C po gtk30.pot
    make -C po-properties gtk30-properties.pot

 4) 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.ac.

 5) Verify that the version in configure.ac has been bumped after the last
    release. (Note that this is critical, a slip-up here will cause the
    soname to change).

 6) 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 function
      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

 7) 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. Look at the
    -undocumented.txt files and see if there is anything in there that
    should be documented. If it is, this may be due to typos in the doc
    comments in the source. 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.

 8) make distcheck

 9) Fix broken stuff found by 8), commit changes: git commit -a, repeat.

10) Once distcheck succeeds, verify that the tree is clean: git diff should
    come up empty.

10) 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.

11) Tag the release. The git command for doing that looks like

    git tag -m "GTK+ 2.12.10" 2.12.10

12) Push the tagged commit upstream. The git command for doing that is

    git push origin refs/tags/2.12.10

13) Bump the version number in configure.ac and commit and push this change

14) 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.xz matthiasc@master.gnome.org:
      ssh matthiasc@master.gnome.org ftpadmin install gtk+-2.12.10.tar.xz

15) Upload the tarball and checksum to ftp.gtk.org and put them in the right
    directory below /ftp/pub. Pay attention to correct ownership, and don't
    forget to update the LATEST file in the directory.

16) 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.

17) Send it to gnome-announce-list, gtk-list, gtk-app-devel-list and
    gtk-devel-list. Set reply-to to desktop-devel-list.

18) Add a link to the release announcement to www.gtk.org which lives
    in the gtk-web git module.