My understanding from unc0rr is that as long as trunk and .17 are in sync, they maintain the protocol number.
Once they desync, trunk gets a new one
1. Fix broken trainings/missions
2. Update translations (check fireforge for patches)
3. Check copyright headers
4. Changelog
5. Turn debug stuff off (frontend console output)
6. Update message in game server, update check for client version
7. Make a branch
8. Make packages
9. Test packages
10. Upload (hedgewars.org, fireforge.net, gna.org (rsync --delete -avr --rsh="ssh" . unc0rr@download.gna.org:/upload/hedgewars))
11. Post news (hedgewars.org, hedgewars forum, fireforge.net, gna.org, happypenguin, etc.)
12. Make tag (svn copy svn+ssh://unc0rr@svn.fireforge.net/svnroot/hedgewars/branches/0.9.7 svn+ssh://unc0rr@svn.fireforge.net/svnroot/hedgewars/tags/0.9.7 -m "Tag for 0.9.7 release")