About releases
Releases are deployable software iterations you can package and make available for a wider audience to download and use.
Releases are based on Git tags, 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."
You 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."
Anyone 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."
People with admin permissions to a repository can choose whether Git Large File Storage (Git LFS) objects are included in the ZIP files and tarballs that GitHub AE creates for each release. For more information, see "Managing Git LFS objects in archives of your repository."
You can also use the Releases API to gather information, such as the number of times people download a release asset. For more information, see "Releases."