1. After the new branch has been created and pushed, update the Cargo.toml files on **master** to the next semantic version (e.g. 0.9.0 -> 0.10.0) with:
template](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/solana-labs/solana/master/.github/RELEASE_TEMPLATE.md). Engineering Lead can provide summary contents for release notes if needed. If this is a patch release, review all the commits since the previous release on this branch and add details as needed.
1. Click "Save Draft", then confirm the release notes look good and the tag name and branch are correct.
1. Ensure the release is marked **"This is a pre-release"**. This flag will then need to be be removed once the the Linux binary artifacts appear later.
1. Go back into edit the release and click "Publish release" when ready.
1. Go to [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/releases) and create a new draft release for `X.Y.Z+1` with empty release nodes. This allows people to incrementally add new release notes until it's time for the next release
1. Go to the [Github Milestones](https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/milestones). Create a new milestone for the `X.Y.Z+1`, move over
unresolved issues still in the `X.Y.Z` milestone, then close the `X.Y.Z` milestone.
Go to [Solana Releases](https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/releases) and click on the latest release that you just published.
Verify that all of the build artifacts are present, then the uncheck **"This is a pre-release"** for the release.
Build artifacts can take up to 60 minutes after creating the tag before
appearing. To check for progress:
* The `solana-secondary` Buildkite pipeline handles creating the Linux release artifacts and updated crates. Look for a job under the tag name of the release: https://buildkite.com/solana-labs/solana-secondary.
* The macOS and Windows release artifacts are produced by Travis CI: https://travis-ci.com/github/solana-labs/solana/branches
[Crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/solana) should have an updated Solana version. This can take 2-3 hours, and sometimes fails in the `solana-secondary` job.
If this happens and the error is non-fatal, click "Retry" on the "publish crate" job