Improve UX around creating release notes

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Feature Summary

Managing sidebar_position value is confusing and a pain point for writing release notes.

Furthermore, copying/pasting the files is not ideal, but may be necessary for current set up.

I think in particular we should figure out how to eliminate the need for the sidebar_position or at least the manual interaction with it.

Feature Category

User experience

Problem This Solves

Optimizes process for creating release notes

Proposed Solution

Potential solution could be a script that takes a singular release note file and then automatically copies it to the right directories and injects appropriate metadata. Dev flow like:

1. Create release notes file (content only)
2. Run script like npm run automate-release-note <release-note-file>
3. Push branch and open PR

User Stories

No response

Alternatives Considered

No response

Priority/Impact

Medium - important but not urgent

Examples or References

No response

Additional Context

No response

Are you planning to fix this issue?

Yes, I'll submit a PR to fix this

First-time contributor support

• I'm new to contributing and would appreciate guidance on the process
• I'd like help understanding the project structure
• I need assistance with setting up the development environment
• I'm comfortable contributing but new to this project specifically

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Furthermore, this is only necessary for the ordering in the sidebar. Maybe there is a better way to display release notes there? Maybe we can optimize the current process then iterate on that aspect of the platform later.

[heskew]

We have a single release notes dir now, https://github.com/HarperDB/documentation/tree/main/release-notes, but adding a release note still requires touching two additional files. e.g. https://github.com/HarperDB/documentation/pull/275/files

[Ethan-Arrowood]

Is the process for adding release notes documented anywhere? Like I think a quick section in Contributing.md would be nice. I think the improvements you made are good enough for now until we restructure the site even more.

[heskew]

It's just adding a single release note file currently and it's not documented anywhere. I could write something up. Would be nice to push release notes from github releases so it just all works but there are other pieces to that...

[heskew]

Started something but it more than doubled the size of contributing.md 🫠

https://github.com/HarperDB/documentation/blob/release-notes-contrib/CONTRIBUTING.md#release-notes-process

[heskew]

I cut a pr if that makes things easier. no worries if it needs to be change or/and put elsewhere.

#325