"The good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad news is that they do what you tell them to do."
-- unsure; often attributed without source to information philosopher Ted Nelson
If a software package is intended for someone other than the programmer to use it, getting the package to that person is called distribution.
The directory structure for the software package distribution will be the same as for the development environment, except that the name of the top-level directory will end with a dash followed by the version number of the package (for example, hello-1.0.0), and the distribution might not include all the files in the development directory.
The most common method for distribution is to archive the distribution directory with "tar", then compress it with "gzip" or Unix "compress". For example:
tar cf hello-1.0.0.tar ./hello-1.0.0/ gzip hello-1.0.0.tar
If you use autoconf and automake, they provide a "make dist" target that automatically builds a distribution directory and archives and compresses it. The "make distcheck" target will build a distribution archive, then test it to make sure it works.
automake will automatically include in the distribution all source code files, Makefile.am's, and certain other common files like README, NEWS, and INSTALL. However, data files will not automatically be distributed. See the automake documentation for more details.
Most Unix-like operating systems these days specify a "package" format for convenient installation. The user typically downloads the package file and runs a single command to install the package, and all files needed to use the package are automatically put in the right places.
If your package is intended to be used only or primarily on such a system, you might consider packaging it. Otherwise, you might wait to see if there is any demand for a package.
There is always the possibility that a distribution will be tampered with before it reaches the end user. To help minimize this vulnerability, the distribution can include checksums and cryptological signatures that the user can verify.
A common tool for checksums is MD-5. A common tool for signing files is PGP (or the GNU equivalent GPG).