ReleasingWesnoth

normal tools to build everything from Wesnoth and to fetch svn head
po4a (to be able to update the manpages and manual)
docbook-xml-dtd (to generate the manual html files, I am currently using app-text/docbook-xml-dtd-4.5, not needed anymore for >=1.5.x but manual files should be regenerated by hand before packaging!)
xdelta 1.x (to create the xdelta files)
optipng (only for needed to run utils/wesnoth-pngcrush, not for normal releases)

general maintance stuff, not strictly release associated

run utils/wesnoth-pngcrush from the maindir of the svn rep every now and then, requires the package optipng
run a pot-update regulary, one shortly before the release, this includes the following steps as of current 1.4-rc time:

change into the svn dir, svn up (to not get conflicts) and run ./autogen.sh
# recreate the manpages and manuals
make update-po4a
# update all other po-files
cd po && make update-po && cd ..
# make sure that no new files were created, if new manpages/manuals were created, add them via svn add
svn st
# commit the bunch of updated po-files and manpages/manuals
svn ci doc/ po/

run 'make' inside data/tools (runs a check for unresolved references, followed by wmllint with appropriate o[tions, followed by a check for unused image and resource files)
run wmlindent from data/tools to indent all content correctly
run data/tools/about_cfg_to_wiki from svn root and copy the output to http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Credits to updates the credits on the website
have a look at the pages from the category Review on Release

release commands

bump the version in configure.ac, src/wesconfig.h, config.h.dummy
check changelog and players_changelog, change the version of both
commit
do the following steps to generate a tarball:

# update svn, just to be sure that you have the latest version, write down the revision you are using
svn up
# exporting the svn dir to have a clean version of the tree and switch into the temporary release dir
svn export wesnoth wesnoth_release && cd wesnoth_release
# generate configure files
./autogen.sh
# create a bzip2 compressed tarball, in this step all po-files and the manpages and the manual will be updated
make dist-bzip2

now there should be the tarball named wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2 in the root of wesnoth_release, move it somewhere for testing
uncompress the tarball via "tar xfj wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2" and change into the resulting folder named "wesnoth-VERSION/"
run configure with params to build all necessary stuff that should at least build (at least needed are --enable-editor, --enable-server and --enable-campaign-server, the rest is just meant to seperate all datadirs from the normal installation ones)

./configure --enable-server --enable-editor --enable-campaign-server \
--bindir=/games-bin --datadir=/games/ \
--with-preferences-dir=.wesnoth-test --program-suffix=-test --with-datadir-name=wesnoth-test

compile everything, use LC_ALL=C to have english error output if something goes wrong:

LC_ALL=C make

remove all existing teststuff you currently have installed (probably requires running as root for the installed files, user privs are enough to remove stuff in ~/.wesnoth-test)
install the game via "make install", running right from the sources is *not* enough to be sure that everything works as expected, for normal installation into your system, root privs are probably needed (replace "su -c" by sudo if your system does use sudo instead of su -c)

su -c "LC_ALL=C make install"

test the build

this at least includes the following:

- start the editor, check if creating a map is possible
- start the game and try to connect to the official mp-server and to the add-on server
- start the server, connect to it using the game to see if you can enter the lobby
- check if in the game each campaign does start
- check if you can start the ingame help and the credits
- check if it is possible to create a local game
- play at least one game/scenario (or droid your side to let the ai play), this can either be a normal campaign scenario or an mp game

If all of those points are working as expected, go on, if not, fix the problems and restart from the very beginning.

if everything does work, tag using the revision you wrote down (replace BRANCH either with trunk for a normal dev release, or with branches/X.Y for a stable release, the tagnumber should be of the format X.Y.Z, USER is the useraccount at gna.org with commit privs):

svn -r REVISION copy svn+ssh://USER@svn.gna.org/svn/wesnoth/BRANCH svn+ssh://USER@svn.gna.org/svn/wesnoth/tags/TAGNUMBER

create an updated macro-reference.xhtml:

cd wesnoth-VERSION-dir/data/tools
make macro-reference.xhtml

upload the created file macro-reference.xhtml to ftp.wesnoth.org/www/misc/

create an updated unit tree:

ssh to server.wesnoth.org
run "update_unit_tree <new version>" to update units.wesnoth.org

create the md5sum for the tarball:

md5sum wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2 > wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2.md5

create the xdelta of the uncompressed tarball, you do need the uncompressed tarball of the previous release to be able to do so:

bunzip2 wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2
xdelta delta wesnoth-OLDVERSION.tar wesnoth-VERSION.tar wesnoth-OLDVERSION.tar-wesnoth-VERSION.tar.xdelta

upload the files wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2, wesnoth-VERSION.tar.bz2.md5 and wesnoth-OLDVERSION.tar-wesnoth-VERSION.tar.xdelta to ftp.wesnoth.org/www/files and sourceforge.net/incoming
create the respective release at the wesnoth project at sf.net. Paste the content of players_changelog as release notes and the full changelog as changelog. If there is content in RELEASE_NOTES, do use it at the top of the "release notes"-section
once the upload is completed, do contact the known packagers, this is the current list as of 1.4.4:

amirserdang  |ATTT| gmail.com (current Mac OSX packager)
joerg.hinrichs  |ATTT| softeck.de (old Windows packager)
cycholka  |ATTT| wp.pl (current Windows packager)
hhetter  |ATTT| novell.com (OpenSuse packager)
rhonda  |ATTT| deb.at (current debian packager)
bero  |ATTT| arklinux.org (arklinux)
mr_bones_  |ATTT| gentoo.org (official gentoo packages, will only be included for stable and beta/rc releases)
markus.schmeing  |ATTT| udo.edu (unofficial gentoo packages, basically inactive)
burningshadow  |ATTT| syllable-norden.info  (syllable)
enqlave  |ATTT| gmail.com (unknown)
sobotkap  |ATTT| centrum.cz (OpenSolaris)

Basic text for such an announcement:

Topic: Wesnoth VERSION is out
Body:

I am currently uploading the sources to sf.net, they are already available via files.wesnoth.org. I will announce the release tomorrow, so you can create and upload the packages in the meantime.

Some foo about changes/additions/stuff to keep in mind that is basically packager specific like added deps and stuff like this

Best regards and thank you for your contribution to Wesnoth
SIGNATURE

contact Soliton so that he updates the server so support that new version (required for dev-releases, should not be needed for stable releases after rc time is started)
login server.wesnoth.org via ssh and run "update_unit_tree <new version>" to update units.wesnoth.org
up version to wesnoth-VERSION+svn in configure.ac, src/wesconfig.h, config.h.dummy, changelog and players_changelog

Wait for about one day
update the downloads website
post an announcement in the forums, do at least mention the text from RELEASE_NOTES plus some other important changes
update the frontpage
copy the news into the "old news" in the wiki (so that everything will be listed there)
submit versions updates for stable versions to all sites that are known to monitor Wesnoth, ask the respective packagers to do so for OS specific sites (like apple.com).

sites monitoring Wesnoth releases

This is a (probably completely outdated) list of sites that do monitor Wesnoth releases. Most of these require manual submissions of update request. This should be done by whoever has an account at the respective sites:

ReleasingWesnoth

Contents

tools needed for releasing

general maintance stuff, not strictly release associated

release commands

sites monitoring Wesnoth releases