How to make an MPlayer release
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

preparations:
- Announce the intent to create a release branch on mailing lists and IRC.
- Ask translators to get their languages synchronized.
- Update the Changelog.
- Identify regressions or other serious issues, fix or revert (on the branch)
  as needed so the release is of good quality.
- Find a codename for the release

create the release tree:
- tag Subversion with release name
- Add a VERSION file with the release version to the root of the source tree.
- update release.sh script with version number
***the following steps are done automatically by release.sh script***
- checkout the mplayer src tree
- check out FFmpeg subdirs
- remove obsolete DOCS translations, help files

- build the HTML docs from XML sources, then clean up

release the tree:
    cd ..
    mv main MPlayer-0.90rc5
    tar -cf MPlayer-0.90rc5.tar MPlayer-0.90rc5
    bzip2 -9 MPlayer-0.90rc5.tar
***end of part done by release.sh**

test it (download to your local machine, extract, compile, run)
 - compilers: gcc 4.x, gcc 3.x, gcc 2.95, MinGW, Cygwin
 - architectures: PPC, AMD64, x86 with MMX[2], SSE[2], 3DNow
 - OS: Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac OS X

copy to FTP:
    cp MPlayer-0.90rc5.tar.bz2 /home/ftp/MPlayer/releases/
    cp Changelog-0.90rc5 and update Changelog symlink
    md5sum MPlayer-0.90rc5.tar.bz2 > MPlayer-0.90rc5.tar.bz2.md5

Write a news entry for the release, update the links in dload.html. Test it,
sometimes links are broken. Do not forget the translations.

Send the release notes as a mail to the mplayer-announce mailing list.

Add the new release version to bugzilla page.

Update release version in #mplayer and #mplayerdev topics.

Update project page on Freshmeat

Done.
