Here are the steps to follow to create a new pixman release: 1) Ensure that there are no uncommitted changes or unpushed commits, and that you are up to date with the latest commits in the central repository. Here are a couple of useful commands: git diff (no output) git status (should report "nothing to commit") git log master...origin (no output; note: *3* dots) 2) Increment pixman_(major|minor|micro) in configure.ac according to the directions in that file. 3) Run make PREV= release-check and fix things until it passes. A very useful thing to do is to run the cairo test suite against pixman. This can be done by running the following commands in the "test" directory of the latest cairo release: tar xzf cairo-X.Y.Z.tar.gz cd cairo CAIRO_TEST_TARGET=image make test 4) Use "git commit" to record any changes made in steps 2 and 3. 5) Generate the final tar files with make distcheck and publish the tar files by running make GPGKEY= release-publish 7) Increment pixman_micro to the next larger (odd) number in configure.ac. Commit this change, and push all commits created during this process using git push --tags You must use "--tags" here; otherwise the new tag will not be pushed out. This is because technobable. 8) Run make release-publish-message to generate a draft release announcement. Edit it as appropriate and send it to cairo-announce@cairographics.org and xorg-announce@lists.freedesktop.org