Here are most of the steps we (maintainers) follow when making a release.

* Start from a clean, up-to-date git directory on "master":

    make -k maintainer-clean || { ./configure && make maintainer-clean; }
    git checkout master
    git pull origin master

* Ensure that the latest stable versions of autoconf, automake, etc.
  are in your PATH.  See the buildreq list in bootstrap.conf for
  the complete list of tools.

* Ensure that you have no uncommitted diffs.  This should produce no
  output:

    git diff

* Ensure that you've pushed all changes that belong in the release:

    git push origin master

* Check that the GitLab CI/CD is reporting all is well:

    https://gitlab.com/gsasl/guile-gnutls/-/pipelines

* Run the following command to download any new translations:

    ./bootstrap && ./configure

* Pre-release testing: ensure that the following commands succeed:

    make check syntax-check distcheck

* To (i) set the date, version number, and release TYPE on line 3 of
  NEWS, (ii) commit that, and (iii) tag the release, run

    # "TYPE" must be stable, beta or alpha
    make release-commit RELEASE='X.Y TYPE'

* Run the following to create release tarballs.  Your choice selects the
  corresponding upload-to destination in the emitted gnupload command.
  The different destinations are specified in cfg.mk.  See the definitions
  of gnu_ftp_host-{alpha,beta,stable}.

    make release RELEASE='X.Y TYPE'

* Test the tarball.  Copy it to a few odd-ball systems and ensure that
  it builds and passes all tests.

* While that's happening, write the release announcement that you will
  soon post.  Start with the template, $HOME/announce-@PACKAGE@-X.Y
  that was just created by that "make" command.

Once all the builds and tests have passed,

* Run the gnupload command that was suggested by your "make release"
  run above, or run

    make upload RELEASE='X.Y TYPE'

* Wait a few minutes (maybe up to 30?) and then use the release URLs to
  download all tarball/signature pairs and use gpg --verify to ensure
  that they're all valid.

* Push the NEWS-updating changes and the new tag:

    v=$(cat .prev-version)
    git push origin master tag v$v

* Create a GitLab release based on the tag and attach the tarball and
  signature: guile-gnutls*.tar.gz*

* Send the announcement email message.

* Update this file with any missing steps, re-generate diff and commit
  the result.

    diff -u gnulib/top/README-release README-release \
         > gl/top/README-release.diff
    git commit -m "Improve README-release." gl/top/README-release.diff
