recommended method for building a source distiribution?

["Gary Funck" <gary at intrepid dot com>]

I've read over the install notes, the FAQ, a couple of the make files (well
not in detail), but haven't found the answer to my question:

What's the recommended method for building a GCC source release?

I've made some mods to GCC, and would like to make the source code
available - not just as a set of "diffs", but also also as a full source
tree similar in form to the official GCC source distribution. Which set of
commands do I run to make this sort of distribution?
I see some rules for "dis", "distdir", and "distcheck", but am unsure about
their intended purporse. I'm working with GCC 2.95.3 sources, and when I try
"make distrib" at the top level, the following message is printed:

    Building a full distribution of this tree isn't done
    via 'make dist'.  Check out the etc/ subdirectory

I looked around in ./etc but didn't find much additional info. there.

A "make dist" in the ./gcc directory tells me that I need to rerun configure
with the --enable-nls switch. I tried that (although not from scratch), and
this didn't seem to help mcuh. I was uncertain where a "make distrib" inside
the ./gcc directory would archive the directories at the same level as ./gcc
anyway.

thanks for your help. - Gary