Releasing bcolz

Preliminaries

Make sure that RELEASE_NOTES.rst and ANNOUNCE.rst are up to date with the latest news in the release.

Commit your changes:

$ git commit -a -m"Getting ready for X.Y.Z final"

Once a year: check that the copyright year in LICENSES/BCOLZ.txt and in docs/conf.py is up to date.

Create a tag X.Y.Z from master. Use the next message:
```
$ git tag -a X.Y.Z -m "Tagging version X.Y.Z"
```
Note: For release candidates, just add a rcN suffix to tag ("X.Y.ZrcN").
Or, alternatively, make a signed tag (requires gpg correctly configured):
```
$ git tag -s X.Y.Z -m "Tagging version X.Y.Z"
```
Push the tag to the Github repo:
```
$ git push
$ git push --tags
```

After compiling, run:

$ PYTHONPATH=.   (or "set PYTHONPATH=." on Win)
$ export PYTHONPATH=.  (not needed on Win)
$ python -c "import bcolz; bcolz.test(heavy=True)"

Run the test suite in different platforms (at least Linux and Windows) and make sure that all tests passes.

Make sure that you are in a clean directory. The best way is to re-clone and re-build:

$ cd /tmp
$ git clone git@github.com:Blosc/bcolz.git
$ cd bcolz
$ python setup.py build_ext

Do a quick check that the tarball is sane.

Send an announcement to the bcolz, blosc, pydata and python-announce lists. Use the ANNOUNCE.rst file as skeleton (or possibly as the definitive version).
Tweet about the new release and rejoice!

Create new headers for adding new features in RELEASE_NOTES.rst and add this place-holder instead:

#XXX version-specific blurb XXX#
Commit your changes with:

$ git commit -a -m"Post X.Y.Z release actions done"

That's all folks!