Release tarball with no top-level directory

[mia-0]

Release tarballs should have a top-level directory named lurch-$version. This is expected by most packaging tools (and users generally don’t want the working directory littered with stuff when running tar -xf).

[mia-0]

Also, consider signing the source releases (and git commits) with GPG.

[gkdr]

and users generally don’t want the working directory littered with stuff when running tar -xf

That does sound convincing, I hate that and I didn't pay attention I guess.

I'm not sure if I'd break some of the community repo builds if I change it now though, but if you can show me which packaging tools say they expect it that way I'd have a strong case to change it.

[mia-0]

There are options to work around that of course, but for example the RPM %setup macro expects a single top-level directory by default. I imagine it is similar for Debian, as the vast majority of source code is distributed that way.

You’re also not very likely to break many community packages that way (and if so, it’s a trivial fix), as any distro worth its salt keeps a pristine copy of the sources instead of relying on GitHub and SourceForge to be around with unmodified tarballs.