This is an checlist of the steps in creating a new release.
In hopes this will prevent omissions.

DavidA. 30 November 2012

Source here means libdwarf/dwarfdump/dwarfgen source (in Git).
Tests  here means the regression tests (in another Git repository).

In the Source:

Update the source and build with your changes.
Update the appropriate ChangeLog file so every 
file in Git which changes (except ChangeLog and NEWS)
are in ChangeLog.
      (at year end, move ChangeLog to ChangeLogyyyy
       where yyyy is the year ending and create a new
       empty ChangeLog)

Use dicheck (also in sourceforge) to verify indentation of
all .h .cc and .c files is consistent.

Ensure all interfaces in libdwarf that are call able by users
are in libdwarf.h and are documented in libdwarf2.1.mm or
libdwarf2p.1.mm and that any changes in the .mm also
mean you inserted a version and date change 
in the date lines near the front of that .mm.
Then regenerate the pdf if any changes.

Run any small preliminary tests that seem applicable.

In the Tests:

Create any new tests that seem applicable. 
Add the appropriate lines to DWARFTEST.sh which
actually does the test running.

RUNALL.sh 
  Runs one test of the new dwarfdump/libdwarf executable
  against the previously saved dwarfdump/libdwarf executable.

The notion of keeping baseline test output and simply
comparing output of a previous release vs the new 
candiate release would involve saving some really large files.
So the present test suite instead runs each test with
two dwarfdump* versions and compares the output.

To run all the tests, most of which
compare the (committed in tests) dwarfdump
against your new source: 
   sh PICKUPBIN   # This picks up latest source and compiles
                  # (for some files multiple times)
                  # It is essential before each test run.
   sh RUNALL.sh   # This runs the tests 3 times with different
                  # dwarfdump[2] and different comparisons

To check for failure:
    grep FAIL  ALL*
    If there are any FAILS decide if they are real failures
    (in which case fix the Source and retest) or are in fact
    the output change that is expected given the Source changes.

In case all tests pass:
    cp dwarfdump dwarfdump.O
    commit the updated .O executables as the new baseline good
    dwarfdump for the next test run.

In the Source:
    sh UPDATEDWARFDUMPVERSION.sh #updates the version string in 4 places
    update dwarfdump[2]/ChangeLog files to reflect the new version.
    commit the new version string. If this has been done recently
    enough that users won't see the current version string 
    it need not be done at this time.

    sh BLD #to verify it still builds
    git push origin master  # Push to sourceforge.
    # We use 20121130 as an example below, use the current date.
    sh CPTOPUBLIC # To copy relevant Source to a temp directory
    sh BLDLIBDWARFTAR 20121130 # (use current date) to create a tar.gz
                               # like libdwarf-20121130.tar.gz
    md5sum libdwarf-20121130.tar.gz
    sha512sum libdwarf-20121130.tar.gz
             # To get unforgeable checksums for the tar.gz file
    git tag -a 20121130  -m 'Release 20121130'
    git push origin 20121130   # push the tag

In the Tests:
    git push origin master
    git tag -a 20121130  -m 'Release 20121130'
    git push origin 20121130   # push the tag

Update web pages so that the new release is visble to users
and copy the tar.gz to the appropriate web site.