Release Guidelines

While preparing for the release:

• for stable: search tickets by 'stable-candidate' keyword and apply commits to stable branch from all found tickets;
• create cleanup branch (if needed) with some little patches (usually with typecasts fixies, etc);
• create ticket (type=task) for release. Ticket must be blocked by cleanup branch (if present);
• vote for cleanup branch (if present);
• download translations from Transifex.net by command ​tx pull --all and run:

  for i in *.po; do sed -i -e '/^#:/d' $i; done
  

• update NEWS file in repo and Wiki;
• create new tag in git by command

  git tag -s <version>
  git push origin <version>
  

• new version in Trac;
• new milestone in Trac (no needed for stable branch);
• create tar.(bz2|xz) package files:

   mkdir dist; cd dist; ../configure && make dist-bzip2 && make dist-xz
  

• make checksums for archives:

  sha256sum mc-*tar.* >sha256.sum
  

• upload source packages and checksums to special upload area;
• developers should download tarballs, verify checksums, compile and locally install. If everything is ok than developers keep votes in ticket;
• upload source packages and checksums to ​http://www.midnight-commander.org/downloads;
• update Wiki start page with latest release number;
• write an announcement: list user visible changes (bugs and features);
• close current milestone (no needed for stable branch);
• close ticket for release.