# Software Release Practice HOWTO

### Eric Steven Raymond

Thyrsus Enterprises

`<esr@thyrsus.com>`

Copyright © 2000 Eric S. Raymond

Revision History
Revision 4.0 | 2010-04-11 | Revised by: esr
It's no longer necessary to provide RPMS or debs at project level. The packaging infrastructure has gotten good at that. New caveats about configuration and autotools. AsciiDOC is now a viable alternative fr documentation masters.
Revision 3.9 | 2004-11-28 | Revised by: esr
New material on good patching practice. Recommend Electric Fence and valgrind rather than proprietary tools.
Revision 3.8 | 2003-02-17 | Revised by: esr
URL fixups after site move.
Revision 3.7 | 2002-09-25 | Revised by: esr
Point at the DocBook Demystification HOWTO.
Revision 3.6 | 2002-09-12 | Revised by: esr
Incorporated material on portability by Keith Bostic.
Revision 3.6 | 2002-08-14 | Revised by: esr
Rewrote section on documentation practice, since XML-Docbook is mature now.
Revision 3.5 | 2002-07-04 | Revised by: esr
Added section on providing checksums. Cited doclifter.
Revision 3.4 | 2002-01-04 | Revised by: esr
More about good patching practice.
Revision 3.3 | 2001-08-16 | Revised by: esr
New section about how to send good patches.
Revision 3.2 | 2001-07-11 | Revised by: esr
Note about not relying on proprietary components.
Revision 3.1 | 2001-02-22 | Revised by: esr
LDP Styleguide fixes.
Revision 3.0 | 2000-08-12 | Revised by: esr
First DocBook version. Advice on SourceForge and a major section on documentation practice added.

This HOWTO describes good release practices for Linux and other open-source projects. By following these practices, you will make it as easy as possible for users to build your code and use it, and for other developers to understand your code and cooperate with you to improve it.

This document is a must-read for novice developers. Experienced developers should review it when they are about to release a new project. It will be revised periodically to reflect the evolution of good-practice standards.

|  | Next
|  | Introduction