chore: add release script and github workflow

[HeartLinked]

This contribution introduces release automation tooling including:

• /dev/release/README.md: Release process documentation
• /dev/release/*.sh: Release script utilities
• /dev/release/check_rat_report.py: Check Apache lisence script for release
• /dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt: List of files excluded from RAT license checks
• .github/workflows/rc.yml: GitHub Actions automation for release

[wgtmac]

This is ported from iceberg-go which is also pretty similar to the Arrow release script. Could you help review this? @zeroshade @raulcd

[wgtmac]

nit: the PR title can be chore: add release script and github workflow

[wgtmac]

@Fokko @raulcd @zeroshade Do you have more comment on this PR?

[raulcd]

minor nit, once the release is done, we could also send an email to the [email protected] mailing list.
See the list here:
https://lists.apache.org/[email protected]

[wgtmac]

@raulcd I'm not sure why my announcement email for parquet release always gets rejected by it :/

[raulcd]

@raulcd I'm not sure why my announcement email for parquet release always gets rejected by it :/

I remember I had a lot of problems configuring my email so they didn't get rejected from the announce mailing list but I did it a long time ago and I don't recall how I solved it, I basically had to configure my Gmail account to do not send multipart headers and only a plain text message when sending emails to the announce mailing list. I recall @zeroshade configured it not long ago for the Arrow Go releases (he had similar problems), maybe he remembers the exact configuration

[HeartLinked]

@raulcd I've added a draft email for [email protected] at release.sh. Thanks for your advice. In the future, maybe after we upload the release to platforms like Conan Center(#188), we can modify the script and add relevant links? @wgtmac CC

[Fokko]

Some nits. I haven't tried the script myself, but they look good 👍

[wgtmac]

@Fokko Thanks for the review! We will try to go through the entire process on our end to make sure there is no surprise before merging and releasing the initial version.

[HeartLinked]

@Fokko @raulcd @wgtmac I'm glad to tell you I've thoroughly tested the updated release scripts and the supporting GitHub workflow. To do this, I simulated the entire release promotion process using a local SVN repository and my GitHub fork. Steps that don't require specific Apache infrastructure permissions were verified using a simulated environment and have passed successfully.

I believe this PR is ready to be merged now. Once it's in, we should be good to go for our first official release.

• release-rc:

• release:

[wgtmac]

Thanks @HeartLinked for the manual testing! I just checked related Github actions https://github.com/HeartLinked/iceberg-cpp/actions/runs/17546168928 and it looks good.

An issue is that https://github.com/HeartLinked/iceberg-cpp/releases/tag/v0.1.0 still has -rc8 suffix which looks incorrect. Could you please double check if there is anything wrong with it?

[HeartLinked]

Thanks @HeartLinked for the manual testing! I just checked related Github actions https://github.com/HeartLinked/iceberg-cpp/actions/runs/17546168928 and it looks good.

An issue is that https://github.com/HeartLinked/iceberg-cpp/releases/tag/v0.1.0 still has -rc8 suffix which looks incorrect. Could you please double check if there is anything wrong with it?

That was a temporary artifact during testing. The final version of the script now includes a step to rename the files, so the -rcX suffix is correctly removed from all artifacts before the final release is created. The current script is confirmed to work as expected.

[HeartLinked]

@wgtmac I've fixed these comments.Thanks!

[Fokko]

Let's move this forward, thanks @HeartLinked for working on this, and thanks @wgtmac, @raulcd and @zhjwpku for the review 💪