...

• request Bugzilla version update (on INFRA or if you are JMeter committer, ask for sufficient Bugzilla karma to do this yourself)
• ensure changes.xml is up to date. If necessary, commit after update.
• ensure unit tests pass
• do not update the version in build.xml yet; trunk should remain a SNAPSHOT
• check out SVN trunk into a clean workspace, for example (assuming current trunk is 2.7-SNAPSHOT in preparation for releasing 2.7):extract files from SVN trunk up to date (except versions) into a new temporay directory/workspace

svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jmeter/trunk jmeter_2.7_trunkRC1

• Move to new workspace:

cd jmeter_trunk/_2.7_RC1

• update version on the versions in the new workspace: JMeterVersion.java (version and year), build.xml (version) and NOTICE (year)
  • (src/core/org/apache/jmeter/util/JMeterVersion.java)
  • build.xml: section: <property name="jmeter.version" value="2.7"/>
• update xdocs/download_jmeter.xml to the new version
  • section: <!ENTITY release '2.7'>
• Download external jars

...

• build site documents, having first cleaned out existing files (so obsolete files will be removed):
  • TODO should this be done on trunk, before creating the clean checkout? Are there any references to the current version in the docs?

ant clean-docs
ant docs-site

• tag all the workspace's files with a create the new RC tag, e.g. v2_7_RC1 from the workspace
  • (Problem to fix: update overview.html is make by the ant distribution task)

svn copy https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jmeter/trunk https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jmeter/tags/v2_7_RC1

• this will create the tag from the contents of the workspace. Only the updated files will be shown in the commit message; most files will be shown as being copied from trunk.
  • N.B. Tags must be immutable, i.e. must not be changed once created. A tag can be deleted if it is no longer needed, but must not be recreated.
    • If there is a problem with the contents of an RC tag, create a new tag, for example v2_7_RC2
    • If the tag is part of an ongoing release vote, do not delete it whilst the vote is ongoing, even if the vote is now using a later tag. It can be useful to be able to compare the contents of tags as part of the voting process.
    • Once the release vote is over, intermediate tags are no longer needed, and can be deleted.
    • If the tag has not been used in a release vote, it can be deleted immediately.

• build code to make a testing binary with this ant task:

...

• test the new binaries
  • GUI and non-GUI using host with graphic capability
  • non-GUI only using host with no graphic capability
  • ideally test on minimum supported Java and latest Java - especially for GUI
    
• THIS NEEDS FIXING; no need to fetch the tag again, as we already have a clean workspace*
  

Generate Release

• extract files from SVN using the RC tag into a new directory tree

...