How do base commits get released?

[George Plymale II]

Thanks for explaining all that, Ryan! I really appreciate having some
better insight into the release process. Makes a lot more sense now and
I see that it's more work than I expected.

Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> writes:

> It would be good if we could make more frequent releases to get fixes out there, even if they're smaller or not super critical. One reason we don't do this is because our release process involves a great deal of manual labor. I hope to automate more of the process using our buildbot, but we're not there yet.

I'm curious; what parts could be easily automated? The whole release
process sounds a bit tedious as it is currently. It'd be nice to know
what could possibly be improved by members of the community.

Thanks,
- George Plymale II