Managing the 2.29.1 release

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Guys,

  With this forthcoming 2.29.1 point release I have asked for help from
  another engineer - Patsy Franklin.  Patsy works in the glibc team and
  she has extensive experience working with compiler and toolchain
  release processes.  I have asked for her to help me so that we can
  establish a solid, reliable release process.

  In particular I would like to document what we do, and then add that
  documentation to the binutils sources, so that it is available for
  future releases.  We will be basing the process on the notes that
  Tristan has already provided, but I would like to make one important
  change: 

  I want to decouple the technical aspects of selecting what goes into a
  release from the practical aspects of creating the release itself.  So
  the current maintainers will get to approve or reject patches for
  inclusion on the branch, whilst the release manager - Patsy for this
  one - will take care of the practicalities of testing, packaging,
  uploading the tarballs and updating the web sites.

  The intent here is to make the release process simpler and less
  technical, and hence encourage new volunteers to take on the job.
  Ideally we would not need one release manager to oversee all releases,
  but instead rely upon volunteers on an ad-hoc basis.

  This is not to say that these ideas are set in stone.  We are open to
  all comments and suggestions.  Plus we would like to encourage
  feedback and other volunteers to help make binutils releases a better,
  smoother experience for all.

Cheers
  Nick