Release Automation Improvements

[catilac]

Most relevant area for this enhancement?

Build process

Feature to enhance

Release Process

Enhancement details

Automate the steps that require human interaction :)
You mentioned you're already getting the website update step automated which will be amazing.

Can the step of having to perform a release on a personal repository be removed as well?

Would you like to help implement this enhancement?

No, I’m just suggesting the enhancement

[Stefterv]

For the website part there is two approaches here, we could make it fully automatic and have the website update based on the state of the releases change on the GitHub repo.

Or we can make a more streamlined version of what we already have, where when you create a release you trigger an update on the website repo and merge the resulting PR.

I know that @SableRaf was in favour of the second approach as to keep a human in the loop at all times, even at the cost of a bit of manual work. I tend to agree and I would like to have a quick preview of the new website before we push it live.

[Stefterv]

As for the release on the personal repo, we would need to setup a way to create beta & alpha releases on the main repo. This way we could catch issues (like the one with the build-in libraries) earlier.

[Stefterv]

Also I already simplified a lot of the release system here: #1204

[catilac]

I think it's really important to reduce things that have to be fiddled with. Like updating version numbers manually. I've already messed that up twice, and others will do the same. That should be automated. If you want to trigger release manually that's fine I think.

It will be good to move towards a place where it's possible just release with confidence.

Good idea about alpha releases!

[Stefterv]

Thinking about this again now, I think we can also setup the maven central release to be automatic. We initially opted not to because we wanted to have the ability to undo a release (which is not possible on maven) but as we saw this week, we also won't undo a release on GitHub, so there is no longer a reason not to have a direct publish on maven.

[Stefterv]

I added two PR's that will already make the release checklist a few steps shorter.