I've written up a little release script that bundles all the steps
we've mentioned so far into a single command.  Of course, we'll still
have to keep NEWS up to date on our own.

The output prints a trace of what's going on:

  $ ./release.py 1.0.0
  set libbe.version._VERSION = '1.0.0'
  updating AUTHORS
  updating ./becommands/assign.py
  updating ./becommands/html.py
  ...
  commit current status: Bumped to version 1.0.0
  tag current revision 1.0.0
  export current revision to be-1.0.0
  generate libbe/_version.py
  copy libbe/_version.py to be-1.0.0/libbe/_version.py
  generate ChangeLog file be-1.0.0/ChangeLog up to tag 1.0.0
  set vcs_name in be-1.0.0/.be/settings to None
  create tarball be-1.0.0.tar.gz
  remove be-1.0.0

Since we'll be distributing a non-bzr-repo version, it would be nice
to adapt our 'submit bug' procedure (outlined on the main page) to one
that works with this setup.  Without guaranteed versioning, that would
probably be something along the lines of
  be email-bugs [--to be-devel@bugseverywhere.org] BUG-ID ...
With interfaces/email/interactive listening on the recieving end to
grab new-bug emails and import them into an incoming bug repository.

-- 
This email may be signed or encrypted with GPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
The GPG signature (if present) will be attached as 'signature.asc'.
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

My public key is at http://www.physics.drexel.edu/~wking/pubkey.txt