diff --git a/dev-support/create-release.sh b/dev-support/create-release.sh
new file mode 100755
index 00000000000..3976a789ac4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dev-support/create-release.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,124 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+# Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+# contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+# this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+# The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+# (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+# the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+
+
+# Function to probe the exit code of the script commands, 
+# and stop in the case of failure with an contextual error 
+# message.
+run() {
+  echo "\$ ${@}"
+  "${@}"
+  exitCode=$?
+  if [[ $exitCode != 0 ]]; then
+    echo
+    echo "Failed! running ${@} in `pwd`"
+    echo
+    exit $exitCode
+  fi
+}
+
+doMD5() {
+  MD5CMD="md5sum"
+  which $MD5CMD
+  if [[ $? != 0 ]]; then
+    MD5CMD="md5"
+  fi
+  run $MD5CMD ${1} > ${1}.md5
+}
+
+# If provided, the created release artifacts will be tagged with it 
+# (use RC#, i.e: RC0). Do not use a label to create the final release 
+# artifact.
+RC_LABEL=$1
+
+# Extract Hadoop version from POM
+HADOOP_VERSION=`cat pom.xml | grep "<version>" | head -1 | sed 's|^ *<version>||' | sed 's|</version>.*$||'`
+
+echo
+echo "*****************************************************************"
+echo
+echo "Hadoop version to create release artifacts: ${HADOOP_VERSION}"
+echo 
+echo "Release Candidate Label: ${RC_LABEL}"
+echo
+echo "*****************************************************************"
+echo
+
+if [[ ! -z ${RC_LABEL} ]]; then
+  RC_LABEL="-${RC_LABEL}"
+fi
+
+# Get Maven command
+if [ -z "$MAVEN_HOME" ]; then
+  MVN=mvn
+else
+  MVN=$MAVEN_HOME/bin/mvn
+fi
+
+ARTIFACTS_DIR="target/artifacts"
+
+# Create staging dir for release artifacts
+
+run mkdir -p ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}
+
+# Create RAT report
+run ${MVN} apache-rat:check
+
+# Create SRC and BIN tarballs for release,
+# Using 'install’ goal instead of 'package' so artifacts are available 
+# in the Maven local cache for the site generation
+run ${MVN} install -Pdist,docs,src,native -DskipTests -Dtar
+
+# Create site for release
+run ${MVN} site site:stage -Pdist -Psrc
+run mv target/staging/hadoop-project target/r${HADOOP_VERSION}/
+run cd target/
+run tar czf hadoop-site-${HADOOP_VERSION}.tar.gz r${HADOOP_VERSION}/*
+run cd ..
+
+# Stage RAT report
+find . -name rat.txt | xargs -I% cat % > ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}-rat.txt
+
+# Stage CHANGES.txt files
+run cp ./hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/CHANGES-COMMON-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.txt
+run cp ./hadoop-hdfs-project/hadoop-hdfs/CHANGES.txt ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/CHANGES-HDFS--${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.txt
+run cp ./hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/CHANGES-MAPREDUCE-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.txt
+run cp ./hadoop-yarn-project/CHANGES.txt ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/CHANGES-YARN-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.txt
+
+# Stage BIN tarball
+run mv hadoop-dist/target/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}.tar.gz ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.tar.gz
+
+# State SRC tarball
+run mv hadoop-dist/target/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}-src.tar.gz ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}-src.tar.gz
+
+# Stage SITE tarball
+run mv target/hadoop-site-${HADOOP_VERSION}.tar.gz ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}-site.tar.gz
+
+# MD5 SRC and BIN tarballs
+doMD5 ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}.tar.gz
+doMD5 ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}/hadoop-${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}-src.tar.gz
+
+run cd ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}
+ARTIFACTS_DIR=`pwd`
+echo
+echo "Congratulations, you have successfully built the release"
+echo "artifacts for Apache Hadoop ${HADOOP_VERSION}${RC_LABEL}"
+echo
+echo "The artifacts for this run are available at ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}:"
+run ls -1 ${ARTIFACTS_DIR}
+echo 
+echo "Remember to sign them before staging them on the open"
+echo
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 792cea3d9bb..3a79dd4100c 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -470,6 +470,9 @@ Release 2.3.0 - UNRELEASED
     HADOOP-10317. Rename branch-2.3 release version from 2.4.0-SNAPSHOT
     to 2.3.0-SNAPSHOT. (wang)
 
+    HADOOP-10313. Script and jenkins job to produce Hadoop release artifacts. 
+    (tucu)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     HADOOP-10142. Avoid groups lookup for unprivileged users such as "dr.who"