diff --git a/extras/make_release.sh b/extras/make_release.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..0ef0b0f0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/extras/make_release.sh
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+#!/bin/sh
+# Script to make a Scrapy release. To be run from root dir in Scrapy
+# distribution.
+
+# clean repo
+hg purge --all
+
+# build packages
+version=$(python -c "import scrapy; print scrapy.__version__")
+python setup.py sdist bdist_wininst -t "Scrapy $version" -p "win32"
+
+# hash and sign
+cd dist
+md5sum scrapy-$version* > MD5SUMS
+sha1sum scrapy-$version* > SHA1SUMS
+gpg -ba MD5SUMS
+gpg -ba SHA1SUMS
+
+# list files created
+ls -l