{"meta":{"title":"About releases","intro":"You can create a release to package software, along with release notes and links to binary files, for other people to use.","product":"Repositories","breadcrumbs":[{"href":"/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories","title":"Repositories"},{"href":"/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github","title":"Release projects"},{"href":"/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/about-releases","title":"About releases"}],"documentType":"article"},"body":"# About releases\n\nYou can create a release to package software, along with release notes and links to binary files, for other people to use.\n\n## About releases\n\nReleases are deployable software iterations you can package and make available for a wider audience to download and use.\n\nReleases are based on [Git tags](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Tagging), which mark a specific point in your repository's history. A tag date may be different than a release date since they can be created at different times. For more information about viewing your existing tags, see [Viewing your repository's releases and tags](/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/viewing-your-repositorys-releases-and-tags).\n\nYou can receive notifications when new releases are published in a repository without receiving notifications about other updates to the repository. For more information, see [Viewing your subscriptions](/en/enterprise-server@3.18/subscriptions-and-notifications/how-tos/managing-subscriptions-for-activity-on-github/viewing-your-subscriptions).\n\nAnyone with read access to a repository can view and compare releases, but only people with write permissions to a repository can manage releases. For more information, see [Managing releases in a repository](/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/managing-releases-in-a-repository).\n\nYou can manually create release notes while managing a release. Alternatively, you can automatically generate release notes from a default template, or customize your own release notes template. For more information, see [Automatically generated release notes](/en/enterprise-server@3.18/repositories/releasing-projects-on-github/automatically-generated-release-notes).\n\nWhen viewing the details for a release, the creation date for each release asset is shown next to the release asset.\n\nGitHub will automatically include links to download a zip file and a tarball containing the contents of the repository at the point of the tag's creation.\n\nYou can also use the Releases API to gather information, such as the number of times people download a release asset. For more information, see [REST API endpoints for releases and release assets](/en/enterprise-server@3.18/rest/releases)."}