About this document:
Last modified by Alex Smith, 2015-11-11

Copyright (C) 2013 Alex Smith.

This document is licensed under the NetHack General Public License.  See
libnethack/dat/license for details.


This is a chart of all the places in the source distribution that need
to be updated due to a new version of NetHack coming out (i.e. a "if
you produced a new version, what's the minimum that has to change?"):

  * aimake.rules (packageversion option near the start of the file)
    [note: aimake translates this number into various formats
    automatically, so it should be in the format, e.g., 4.3.0 or
    4.3.beta2; only the first 3 components are significant on Windows,
    which is a mess, but one which won't be relevant until/unless
    4.3.1 has betas]
  * libnethack/include/patchlevel.h (VERSION_COMPATIBILITY constant,
    if and only if the new release breaks save compatibility)
  * libnethack/dat/history (first line)
  * dist/debian/changelog (summary changelog entry for Debian)
  * doc/changelog.txt (detailed description of the changes)
  * libnethack_common/include/nethack.h (this is the central place
    from which most C code should be pulling the version number)
  * libnethack/src/pline.c has special code for communicating with
    beta testers, which needs disabling in a release version
  * README (describe the new version)
  * scripts/build-debian-package (filename of the newly created
    package)
  * Port numbers (README, libnethack_client/include/nhclient.h) if you
    break server protocol compatibility (the port number should
    normally be "53" followed by the major, minor, and patchlevel
    version components)

Additionally, almost every release will change the copyright status
(typically just dates, but perhaps more extensively):

  * copyright, binary-copyright.pod
  * aimake.rules ($copyright statement)
  * libnethack/include/patchlevel.h (this is the central place from
    which most C code should be pulling the copyright statement)

Places to announce a new release (including betas):

  * http://reddit.com/r/nethack
  * IRC channels on Freenode: #nethack (just say it's been released),
    #nethack4 (change the topic if necessary)
  * rec.games.roguelikes.nethack on Usenet
  * the networkmotd daemon on http://motd.nethack4.org (needs an admin
    to change this)

Note that the NGPL also requires all modified files to specify who
modified them and when, which is a pretty obnoxious requirement.
Nowadays, we get git to do this automatically: see
scripts/vcs-hooks/git-hooks-post-commit.