[[making-a-release]]

Creating a changelog and tarball for a software release

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The gitlink:git-archive[1] command can create a tar or zip archive from

any version of a project; for example:

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$ git archive --format=tar --prefix=project/ HEAD | gzip >latest.tar.gz

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will use HEAD to produce a tar archive in which each filename is

preceded by "prefix/".

If you're releasing a new version of a software project, you may want

to simultaneously make a changelog to include in the release

announcement.

Linus Torvalds, for example, makes new kernel releases by tagging them,

then running:

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$ release-script 2.6.12 2.6.13-rc6 2.6.13-rc7

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where release-script is a shell script that looks like:

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#!/bin/sh

stable="$1"

last="$2"

new="$3"

echo "# git tag v$new"

echo "git archive --prefix=linux-$new/ v$new | gzip -9 > ../linux-$new.tar.gz"

echo "git diff v$stable v$new | gzip -9 > ../patch-$new.gz"

echo "git log --no-merges v$new ^v$last > ../ChangeLog-$new"

echo "git shortlog --no-merges v$new ^v$last > ../ShortLog"

echo "git diff --stat --summary -M v$last v$new > ../diffstat-$new"

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and then he just cut-and-pastes the output commands after verifying that

they look OK.