On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 12:57 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:
This is not quite the same as a distribution tarball, though, as it omits automatically-generated files (e.g., 'leapseconds', 'version') and it contains a file that is not distributed ('.gitignore').

You may want to start using Github "release" feature to host semi-official tar-balls:

https://help.github.com/articles/creating-releases/