diff --git a/createRelease.sh b/createRelease.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..dd62106a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/createRelease.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+#! /bin/sh -e
+
+dir1=releases
+dir2=nix-state
+mkdir -p $dir1
+cd $dir1
+rm -rf $dir2
+mkdir -p $dir2
+cd $dir2
+svn co https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/branches/state ./
+revision=`svn info | grep ^Revision | sed 's/Revision: //g'`
+cd ..
+date=`date +%Y%m%d`
+tarfile=snix-${date}-rev${revision}.tar.gz
+tar -cvf $tarfile \
+    --preserve-permissions \
+    --atime-preserve \
+    --gzip \
+    --verbose \
+    --no-ignore-command-error \
+    $dir2/
diff --git a/doc/manual/NEWS.txt b/doc/manual/NEWS.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..b12350a91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/manual/NEWS.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+New state nix version by wouter ...
diff --git a/prebootstrap.sh b/prebootstrap.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..0068270d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/prebootstrap.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+#! /bin/sh -e
+
+export ACLOCAL_PATH=/home/$(whoami)/.nix-profile/share/aclocal
+
+export AUTOCONF=autoconf
+export AUTOHEADER=autoheader
+export AUTOMAKE=automake
+
+./bootstrap.sh