How to create a libmesh release on GitHub

Steps for making a libmesh release on github:

• Update the PACKAGE_VERSION line in configure.ac and run bootstrap to update configure.

• Tag the HEAD commit of the branch that will become the release

  git tag -a v0.9.4 -m "tagging v0.9.4"

• Push this tag to upstream if necessary:

  git push --tags upstream

• If you are on a Mac, you might not have XZ, but we build three different tarballs (gz, bz2, and xz) so be sure to grab the XZ binary installer or source.

• Run 'make distcheck' from an existing build directory. This takes a long time, since it creates the tarballs then tests that it can unpack them and run "make dist" in the unpacked directory.

  • If 'make distcheck' fails mysteriously, it may be due to a combination of the way that tar is invoked by the autotools (--format=ustar) and having a large user id. You can test this by calling tar --format-ustar -chf - test_dir on a test directory with files present, and seeing if there are any error messages.

• Go to the release page.

• Click the "Draft a new relase" button

• Enter the appropriate tag in the drop-down box

• Enter a title like "libMesh v0.9.4 Release Candidate 2"

• Enter the list of changes since the last release into the description box.

• Drag and drop the three tarballs created during the "make dist" process into the appropriate part of the page.

• Click the "this is a pre-release" button if appropriate.

• Click "Publish release"