RELEASE-CHECKLIST

Release Checklist
=================

* If first release of the year, update the copyright data in COPYING, and
  README.md

* Update NEWS with release notes, note that
  NEWS is a sym link to changelog.md.
  Having this sym link means we remain compatible with
  autoconf.

* Verify the version (<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCH>) in configure.ac.

* Tag release
  git tag v<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCH>. Here the v prefix is important, because 1)
  it is suggested by Github releases, under "Tagging suggestions", and 2)
  it allows you to publish LTSmin's website too. Travis is configured (through
  .travis.yml) to publish a new website only if the tag matches
  v<MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCH>. The reason is that if you want to publish a paper,
  based on an LTSmin version that is older than what the current website refers
  to, you will not "overwrite" the website. So it is perfectly fine to push
  a tag with a name, say "NFM2016" to Github, it will even perform a binary
  release, but it will not update the website. This is because NFM2016 is not
  prefixed with v. Even if you change the LTSmin version in configure.ac to
  NFM2016, you will still not update the website. Prefixing a tag
  with v may only be done when performing an LTSmin release, based on
  semantic versioning, e.g. it is recommended to push tags like v3.0.0, but not
  vNFM2016 (if NFM2016 is the version in configure.ac).

* make distcheck (creates tarball and checks whether it builds)
  To test specific configurations:
    make distcheck DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS='...'

* Push the tag to origin, Travis will perform the release for you :)

* Bump the version in configure.ac, and commit to master.