Based on #1221. The release date is set to tomorrow March 8th. This is a draft because we only want to merge this tomorrow and make sure to tag the release immediately afterwards.
make dist
does not miss files as shown by this diff between the dist tar.gz and a clean checkout of the repo:
0❯ diff -qr . ../../../secp256k1-clean
1Only in .: aclocal.m4
2Only in ./build-aux: ar-lib
3Only in ./build-aux: compile
4Only in ./build-aux: config.guess
5Only in ./build-aux: config.sub
6Only in ./build-aux: depcomp
7Only in ./build-aux: install-sh
8Only in ./build-aux: ltmain.sh
9Only in ./build-aux/m4: libtool.m4
10Only in ./build-aux/m4: lt~obsolete.m4
11Only in ./build-aux/m4: ltoptions.m4
12Only in ./build-aux/m4: ltsugar.m4
13Only in ./build-aux/m4: ltversion.m4
14Only in ./build-aux: missing
15Only in ./build-aux: test-driver
16Files ./CHANGELOG.md and ../../../secp256k1-clean/CHANGELOG.md differ
17Only in ../../../secp256k1-clean: ci
18Only in ../../../secp256k1-clean: .cirrus.yml
19Only in .: configure
20Files ./configure.ac and ../../../secp256k1-clean/configure.ac differ
21Only in ../../../secp256k1-clean: .git
22Only in ../../../secp256k1-clean: .gitattributes
23Only in ../../../secp256k1-clean: .gitignore
24Only in .: Makefile.in