Checklist for making a Solidity release

Requirements

GitHub account with access to solidity, solc-js, solc-bin, solidity-website.
Personal Access Token (PAT) with write:packages scope to access Github's container registry. You can generate one by visiting https://github.com/settings/tokens/new?scopes=write:packages.
Ubuntu/Debian dependencies of the Docker script: docker-buildx.
npm Registry account added as a collaborator for the solc package.
Access to the solidity_lang Twitter account.
Reddit account that is at least 10 days old with a minimum of 20 comment karma (/r/ethereum requirements).

At least a day before the release:

Run make linkcheck from within docs/ and fix any broken links it finds. Ignore false positives caused by href anchors and dummy links not meant to work. Note: In order to run the link check, make sure you've built the docs first via docs.sh.
Double-check that the most recent docs builds at readthedocs succeeded.
Make sure that all merged PRs that should have changelog entries do have them.
Rerun CI on the top commits of main branches in all repositories that do not have daily activity by creating a test branch or PR:
- solc-js
- solc-bin (make sure the bytecode comparison check did run)
Verify that the release tarball of solc-js works. Bump version locally, add soljson.js from CI, build it, compare the file structure with the previous version, install it locally and try to use it.
Review Learning from Past Releases to make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes.

At least a day before the release:

Create a draft PR to sort the changelog.
Create draft PRs to bump version in solidity and solc-js. Note: The solc-js PR won't pass CI checks yet because it depends on the soljson binary from solc-bin.
Create a draft of the release on github.
Create a draft PR to update soliditylang.org.
Create drafts of blog posts.
Prepare drafts of Twitter, Reddit and Solidity Forum announcements.

Create a post on solidity-website in the Releases category and explain some of the new features or concepts.
Create a post on solidity-website in the Security Alerts category in case of important bug(s).
Update the release information section in the source of soliditylang.org.
Get the PR(s) for the above reviewed and approved before the release starts, but don't merge them yet.

Ensure that all changelog entries are correctly classified as language or compiler features.
Sort the changelog entries alphabetically and correct any errors you notice. Commit it.
Update the changelog to include a release date.
Run scripts/update_bugs_by_version.py to regenerate bugs_by_version.json from the changelog and bugs.json. Make sure that the resulting bugs_by_version.json has a new, empty entry for the new version.
Commit changes, create a pull request and wait for the tests. Then merge it.
Copy the changelog into the release blog post.

Create a release on GitHub. Set the target to the develop branch and the tag to the new version, e.g. v0.8.5. Include the following warning: **The release is still in progress. You may see broken links and binaries may not yet be available from all sources.**. Do not publish it yet - click the Save draft button instead.
Thank voluntary contributors in the GitHub release notes. Use scripts/list_contributors.sh v<previous version> to get initial list of names. Remove different variants of the same name manually before using the output.
Check that all tests on the latest commit on develop are green.
Click the Publish release button on the release page, creating the tag. Important: Must not be done before all the PRs, including changelog cleanup and date, are merged.
Wait for the CI runs on the tag itself.

Take the source tarball (solidity_x.x.x.tar.gz) from c_source_tarball run of the tagged commit on Circle CI and upload it to the release page.
Take the github-binaries.tar tarball from c_release_binaries run of the tagged commit on Circle CI and add all binaries from it to the release page. Make sure it contains five binaries: solc-windows.exe, solc-macos, solc-static-linux, solc-static-linux-arm, and soljson.js.
Take the solc-bin-binaries.tar tarball from c_release_binaries run of the tagged commit on Circle CI and add all binaries from it to solc-bin.
Run npm install if you've got a clean checkout of the solc-bin repo.
Run npm run update -- --reuse-hashes in solc-bin and verify that the script has updated list.js, list.txt and list.json files correctly and that symlinks to the new release have been added in solc-bin/wasm/ and solc-bin/emscripten-wasm32/.
Create a pull request in solc-bin and merge.

Update the version and the hash (sha256sum solidity_$VERSION.tar.gz) in the solidity formula in Homebrew core repository.

Make sure docker-buildx is installed.
Run echo $GHCR_TOKEN | docker login ghcr.io --username $GH_USERNAME --password-stdin where $GH_USERNAME is your GitHub username and $GHCR_TOKEN is a PAT with write:packages scope.
Run ./scripts/docker_deploy_manual.sh v$VERSION.

Wait until solc-bin was properly deployed. You can test this via remix - a test run through remix is advisable anyway.
Increment the version number, create a pull request for that, merge it after tests succeeded.
Create a tag using git tag --annotate v$VERSION and push it with git push --tags.
Wait for the CI runs on the tag itself.
Take the solc-x.y.z.tgz artifact from build-package run on the tagged commit on Circle CI. Inspect the tarball to ensure that it contains an up-to-date compiler binary (soljson.js).
Run npm publish solc-x.y.z.tgz to publish the newly created tarball.

Make sure the documentation for the new release has been published successfully. Go to the documentation status page at ReadTheDocs and verify that the new version is listed, works and is marked as default.
Remove "still in progress" warning from the release notes.

Create a commit to increase the version number on develop in CMakeLists.txt and add a new skeleton changelog entry.
If anything went wrong this time, mention it in Learning from Past Releases.
Bump vendored dependencies.
Lean back, wait for bug reports and repeat from step 1 :).