Update release procedure

[RMeli]

The CHANGELOG in master does not contain release notes for 0.7.1. Add this step to the RELEASE_PROCEDURE.

Improve release procedure, especially for patch releases. (Lessons learned...)

[msimberg]

From the 0.7.2 release, let's add at least the following

• always add release notes to the master branch even for patch releases to avoid mismatch between release and master branch
• always cherry pick changes from master to release branch (changes and release notes)
• can we add something about checking the release branch to make sure it matches what's in the release notes? (at the very least a manual inspection check to compare the release branch to the previous release?)

[rasolca]

I would add to not release until tests passed. I.e. wait that the tests complete for master (major release) or the version branch (minor and patch).

[RMeli]

For patch releases maybe we should add a step to also add branch protection rules? Currently only version_0.3 is protected (version_0.4 is not).

[msimberg]

Should we mention something about using GitHub's milestones for a release? Currently they're not mentioned, but we sort of use them. I created one for 0.7.3 now: https://github.com/eth-cscs/DLA-Future/milestone/31.

[msimberg]

Idea from @RMeli: check automatically that the release branch has non-trivial commits since the previous version tag. Perhaps checking for changes to cpp and other source files in the src directory? May need overriding if making a patch release which only changes/fixes e.g. cmake files. Updating the version in CMakeLists.txt would already satisfy this check which is not what we want?

Then again, we should not go completely overboard with checks either...

[RMeli]

I think I didn't explain myself well, but what I meant was to add a check to the release script to ensure that the tests (CI) have passed, if this is at all queryable with gh. But what you suggest is also useful, it depends how far we want to go.

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gh pr checks allows to see the checks for a given PR but only lasts the CSCS-CI check if it is triggered and it is only for PRs.