Software development: tagging a version and make a release

Disclaimer: I’m not an expert, these are notes to myself, use at your own risk 😉

When I’m developing a software package, every time I make significant changes I update its version. If I feel confident about the state of the software and want to make an official release, then I tag the ‘special’ version using git:

# Make a new tag
git tag -a v0.3.8 -m "Submitted to CRAN"

At this point, I head over to GitHub and click on the ‘release’ button on my repository home page.

Next, I click on ‘Draft a new release’.

I fill in the required field with something like the example below.

Lastly, I click on ‘Publish release’.

If my repository is connected to Zenodo, this trigger the creation of a new archive.