Is the "release role account" concept used in the ASF at all? What would you all suggest?
What httpd does is to have a set of roll scripts in httpd-dist. With the exception of the autoconf and libtool versions, it produces the 'standard' release package. All of the environmental logic is handled by the script - so as long as you run these script, you should produce equivalent releases. releasecheck.sh enforces particular versions of autoconf and libtool that are known to work - however, this still doesn't resolve the problem of distros custom-patching their libtool - which almost everyone does. *sigh* The RM just needs to use the 'vanilla' GNU libtool distribution. (SA doesn't have that problem, IIRC.)
See: <http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/httpd-dist/tools/>
I will also note that Subversion has gone a little bit farther and is starting to dictate specific package creation utilities to avoid known problems (i.e. pax instead of tar). But, the philosophy is the same: code all assumptions into the shell script to allow anyone to do a release at any time that is equivalent.
So, no, we haven't typically done a role account. However, if you guys really wanted one, we could probably arrange it. But, on what machine? ;-)
HTH. -- justin
