To make a release follow these steps.

  1.  Update configure.ac to intended version, commit.

  2.  make distcheck (for weston I do make distcheck TESTS= to avoid
      running the tests... most of the tests pass, but the xwayland one
      is flaky)

  3.  git tag -am 1.5.0 1.5.0

  4.  scp tarballs to /srv/wayland.freedesktop.org/www/releases on
      people.freedesktop.org

  5.  Put SHA1 for tarballs and tagged commits in release announcement

  6.  Push configure.ac commits and tags.

  7.  Send out release announcement.

  8.  Get the release email URL from
      http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/

  9.  Update releases.html in wayland-web with links to tarballs and
      release email.

  10. Update topic in #wayland to point to release announcement

For x.y.0 releases, also create the x.y branch.  The x.y branch is for
bug fixes and conservetive changes to the x.y.0 release, and is where
we release x.y.z releases from.  Creating the x.y branch opens up
master for new development and lets new development move on.  We've
done this both after the x.y.0 release (to focus development on bug
fixing for the x.y.1 release for a little longer) or before the x.y.0
release (like we did with the 1.5.0 release, to unblock master
development early). 

The master branch configure.ac version should always be (at least)
x.y.90, with x.y being the most recent stable branch.  Stable branch
configure version is just whatever was most recently released from
that branch.

For stable branches, we commit fixes to master first, then cherry-pick
them back to the stable branch.