LilyPond Contributor's Guide: 11.3 Major release checklist

## 11.3 Major release checklist

A “major release” means an update of `x` in `2.x.0`.

### Main requirements

This is the current official guidelines.

- 0 Critical issues for two weeks (14 days) after the latest release candidate.

### Potential requirements

These might become official guidelines in the future.

- Check reg test
- Check all 2ly scripts
- Check for emergencies the docs:

  >     grep FIXME --exclude "misc/*" --exclude "*GNUmakefile" \
  >       --exclude "snippets/*" ????*/*

- Check for altered regtests, and document as necessary. (update numbers in the following command as appropriate)

  >     git diff -u -r release/2.12.0-1 -r release/2.13.13-1 input/regression/

### Housekeeping requirements

Before the release:

- write release notes. note: stringent size requirements for various websites, so be brief.
- Run convert-ly on all files, bump parser minimum version.
- Make FTP directories on lilypond.org
- Website:
  - make a link from the old unstable to the next stable in lilypond.org’s /doc/ dir. Keep all previous unstable->stable doc symlinks.

    Also, make the old docs self-contained – if there’s a redirect in /doc/v2.12/Documentation/index.html , replace it with the index.html.old-2.12 files.

    The post-2.13 docs will need another way of handling the self-containment. It won’t be hard to whip up a python script that changes the link to ../../../../manuals.html to ../website/manuals.html , but it’s still a 30-minute task that needs to be done before 2.16.

  - doc auto redirects to v2.LATEST-STABLE
  - add these two lines to http://www.lilypond.org/robots.txt:

    >     Disallow: /doc/v2.PREVIOUS-STABLE/
    >     Disallow: /doc/v2.CURRENT-DEVELOPMENT/

### Unsorted

- submit pots for translation: send url of tarball to translation@iro.umontreal.ca, mentioning lilypond-VERSION.pot
- update links to distros providing lilypond packages? link in: ‘`Documentation/web/download.itexi`’

  This has nothing to do with the release, but it’s a "periodic maintenance" task that might make sense to include with releases.

- Send announcements to...

  News:

  >     comp.music.research
  >     comp.os.linux.announce

  >     comp.text.tex
  >     rec.music.compose

  Mail:

  >     info-lilypond@gnu.org

  >     linux-audio-announce@lists.linuxaudio.org
  >     linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
  >     linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org

  >     tex-music@icking-music-archive.org

  >     --- non-existant?
  >     abcusers@blackmill.net

  >     rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net
  >     info-gnu@gnu.org
  >     noteedit-user@berlios.de

  >     gmane.comp.audio.fomus.devel
  >     gmane.linux.audio.users
  >     gmane.linux.audio.announce
  >     gmane.comp.audio.rosegarden.devel

  Web:

  >     lilypond.org
  >     freshmeat.net
  >     linuxfr.com
  >     http://www.apple.com/downloads
  >     harmony-central.com (news@harmony-central.com)
  >     versiontracker.com [auto]
  >     hitsquad.com [auto]
  >     http://www.svgx.org
  >     https://savannah.gnu.org/news/submit.php?group_id=1673

#### LilyPond — Contributor’s Guide