Based on a discussion earlier this week, we want to move toward implementation of a release work based on pushing a tag to GitHub.

The basic idea is that pushing a release tag (as determined by a designated format) will trigger a full Evergreen build, create all of the distributable artifacts, publish everything to GitHub, and then email the prepared release announcement to the appropriate mail group. A human will review the announcement, confirm that everything is in order, and then send the announcement to the normal places where it is posted publicly.

Additional info from jesse (via email):

The Evergreen task should actually create the release on GitHub with the release notes and upload the tarball, with code like this: https://github.com/10gen/mongo-c-driver-tools/blob/master/release.py#L493

The script should do everything that can't be undone: it should do everything but send the email to the public mailing lists.