diff --git a/lib/tasks/release.rake b/lib/tasks/release.rake
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2f793e80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/tasks/release.rake
@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+#-- copyright
+# ChiliProject is a project management system.
+#
+# Copyright (C) 2010-2011 the ChiliProject Team
+#
+# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
+# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
+# as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
+# of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
+#
+# See doc/COPYRIGHT.rdoc for more details.
+#++
+
+require 'fileutils'
+
+desc "Package up a ChiliProject release from git. example: `rake release[1.1.0]`"
+task :release, [:version] do |task, args|
+  version = args[:version]
+  abort "Missing version in the form of 1.0.0" unless version.present?
+
+  dir = Pathname.new(ENV['HOME']) + 'dev' + 'chiliproject' + 'packages'
+  FileUtils.mkdir_p dir
+
+  commands = [
+              "cd #{dir}",
+              "git clone git://github.com/chiliproject/chiliproject.git chiliproject-#{version}",
+              "cd chiliproject-#{version}/",
+              "git checkout v#{version}",
+              "rm -vRf #{dir}/chiliproject-#{version}/.git",
+              "cd #{dir}",
+              "tar -zcvf chiliproject-#{version}.tar.gz chiliproject-#{version}",
+              "zip -r -9 chiliproject-#{version}.zip chiliproject-#{version}",
+              "md5sum chiliproject-#{version}.tar.gz chiliproject-#{version}.zip > chiliproject-#{version}.md5sum",
+              "echo 'Release ready'"
+             ].join(' && ')
+  system(commands)
+end