[secure]

While on the subject: does anyone know a software/service for automating software releases?

I usually perform these steps manually:

create a new tag, merge the “next” branch into the “master” branch, run “make dist” from a clean checkout, do a handful of sanity checks on the result, gpg-sign it, push it into a separate git repository for the website, archive the current docs in the website, update the website’s docs with the new docs, send posts to a mailing list, twitter, google+, update the changelog with a placeholder for the new version.

I realize not 100% of that is reasonably automatable, but is there anything which tries to tackle this problem?

[lubos]

By the time you would work out how to automate this process in some tool so it adapts to your requirements, you could write your own build script doing exactly all that.

[mskierkowski]

Factor.io might be a good fit for you. I am the co-founder/CEO and I hate self promoting, but in this case I think that we can help. We provide a way for you to create workflows like the one you described. It's kind of like IFTTT/Zapier for Dev/DevOps. But we support running numerous actions, custom code for new extensions, and more complex operations. Still in private beta, but would love to help out and get you to test it out. Shoot me an email [e-mail].

[abraininavat]

Apparently you hate self-promoting on your website as well. Am I missing where you explain what your product does? I see

* this blurb: Factor.io lets developers automate the most tedious processes in minutes, not weeks, so they can ship with ease.

* a link to pricing info, which I'm not interested in because I don't know anything about your product

* a sign-up form, which I'm not interested in because I don't know anything about your product

* one tiny screenshot embedded in a picture of a laptop

and that's about it. You need more screenshots, a video, a list of features, etc.

[mskierkowski]

Good feedback. We are running A/B tests on some of the contents. Regardless I don't think we answer the basic question "what does Factor.io do?"

[JangoSteve]

That's actually what I set out to solve with jspkg.com, at least for JavaScript and CSS based projects. I'd say I've gotten to about 20% done toward that goal. Currently the site allows you to select a git tag from your repo and it will automatically package it up for you and keep track of downloads, archive old releases, etc.

[mrud]

jenkins or any other of the continuous integration solutions

[mindjiver]

Yes, but that normally involves lots of inline-shell-scripting and connecting a wide array of plugins together. It's not exactly a stream-lined process.

[giulianob]

Maybe something like ansible even would make that easier.

[bedatadriven]

the maven-release-plugin is wonderful for this, and integrates nicely with Jenkins

[karlmdavis]

I use the release plugin myself on almost all my projects, but--BUT--it needs to be said that it's not very flexible. If you can't live with the way it's setup to do things, you're better off writing a shell script to automate things your way than trying to bend the release plugin to fit your needs.