Instructions to create pretest or release tarballs. -- originally written by Gerd Moellmann, amended by Francesco Potort́ with the initial help of Eli Zaretskii For each step, check for possible errors. 1. cvs -q update -Pd 2. Bootstrap to make 100% sure all elc files are up-to-date, and to make sure that the later tagged version will bootstrap, should it be necessary to check it out. 3. Regenerate Emacs' etc/AUTHORS file (M-x load-file RET lisp/emacs-lisp/authors.el RET, then M-x authors RET, then save the *Authors* buffer). This may require fixing syntactically incorrect ChangeLog entries beforehand. 4. Set the version number (M-x load-file RET admin/admin.el RET, then M-x set-version RET). For a release, add released change log entries (M-x add-release-logs RET). For a pretest, start at version .90. After .99, use .990 (so that it sorts). If needed, increment the value of the variable `customize-changed-options-previous-release' in cus-edit.el to refer to a newer release of Emacs. (This is probably needed only when preparing a major Emacs release, or branching for it.) 5. rm configure; autoconf make bootstrap 6. Commit configure, README, doc/emacs/emacs.texi, doc/lispref/elisp.texi, etc/AUTHORS, lisp/version.el, nt/emacs.rc, and lisp/cus-edit.el (if modified). Copy lisp/loaddefs.el to lisp/ldefs-boot.el and commit lisp/ldefs-boot.el. For a release, also commit the ChangeLog files in all directories. 7. make-dist --snapshot. Check the contents of the new tar with admin/diff-tar-files against an older tar file. Some old pretest tarballs are kept under fencepost.gnu.org:~pot/emacs-pretest/, while old emacs tarballs are at . If this is the first pretest of a major release, just comparing with the previous release may overlook many new files. You can try something like `find -f | grep -v CVS...etc' in a clean CVS tree, and compare the results against the new tar contents. 8. xdelta delta emacs-OLD.tar.gz emacs-NEW.tar.gz emacs-OLD-NEW.xdelta 9. tar -zxf emacs-NEW.tar.gz; cd emacs-NEW ./configure && make && make -n install Use `script' or M-x compile to save the compilation log in compile-NEW.log and compare it against an old one. The easiest way to do that is to visit the old log in Emacs, change the version number of the old Emacs to __, do the same with the new log and do M-x ediff. Especially check that Info files aren't built. 10. cd EMACS_ROOT_DIR; cvs tag TAG TAG is EMACS_PRETEST_XX_YY_ZZZ for a pretest, EMACS_XX_YY for a release. Shortly before the release, cut the branch with the following commands: cvs rtag EMACS_`NUMBER'_BASE cvs rtag -b EMACS_`NUMBER'_RC -r EMACS_`NUMBER'_BASE where `NUMBER' is the major version number of the release. This makes it easier to see what changes have been applied to the branch with: cvs diff -r EMACS_`NUMBER'_BASE -r EMACS_`NUMBER'_RC or merge changes back to the trunk with "cvs update -j", if necessary. After doing this, increase the version number on the trunk as per step 4. Also, open a Savannah support request asking for commits to the new branch to be sent to the emacs-diffs mailing list (by default, the list normally only gets commits to the trunk). 11. Now you should upload the files to the GNU ftp server. In order to do that, you must be registered as an Emacs maintainer and have your GPG key acknowledged by the ftp people. Mail for instructions. Once you are there, for each file FILE to be released, create a detached GPG binary signature and a clearsigned directive file like this: gpg -b FILE echo directory: emacs/pretest > FILE.directive (for a pretest) echo directory: emacs > FILE.directive (for a release) gpg --clearsign FILE.directive Upload by anonymous ftp to ftp://ftp-upload.gnu.org/ the files FILE, FILE.sig, FILE.directive.asc. For a release, place the files in the /incoming/ftp directory. For a pretest, place the files in /incoming/alpha instead, so that they appear on ftp://alpha.gnu.org/. For a release, upload a bz2 tarfile as well; this can save a lot of bandwidth. 12. After five minutes, verify that the files are visible at ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/ for a pretest, at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ for a release. 13. For a pretest, announce it on emacs-devel and BCC the pretesters. For a release, announce it on info-gnu@gnu.org, info-gnu-emacs@gnu.org, and emacs-devel. # arch-tag: c23c771f-ca26-4584-8a04-50ecf0989390