Release automation

[edeandrea]

We need to create release automation that

1. Publishes artifacts to Maven Central
2. Creates & publishes versioned documentation
3. Creates GitHub release artifacts
4. Creates release notes
5. Broadcasts to social media channels

[edeandrea]

Hi @dolfim-ibm - for this, I'm wondering if the docling-project org has any specific guidelines in place for publishing artifacts to public repositories?

I doubt any of the other projects are publishing to Maven central, but what does the release process for artifacts look like? Are there org secrets that can be used? Are there service/bot accounts?

I have some ideas but wanted to check and see if there was an automated process in place already.

Let me know if you'd like to have a private conversation.

[dolfim-ibm]

Most registries now allow to publish using the OIDC Trusted Publisher mechanism. This is the case for PyPI and npmjs. I don't know yet about Maven central.
If available, it is the best option, otherwise we can create a service account for it.

[dolfim-ibm]

Regarding the release process we want to enforce semantic versioning.

In the other repos we automate it via an "on-demand" GH workflow which is:

1. Update the version
2. Updating the CHANGELOG from the previous commit messages
3. Making a GH Release with the same release notes

Then the GH Action for releases is starting, which builds and publishes the artifacts.

[edeandrea]

For maven central you need to create a secret token that would get stored inside a secret in GitHub and then use that token when publishing (see https://central.sonatype.org/register/central-portal/).

We also want to make sure that the release workflow doesn't actually happen in this project though, otherwise anyone with write access to this project will have access to perform releases, as well as the secret itself.

In most other projects I work in we create a separate "release" project which contains the release automation.

The idea is to make sure even the committers of the project can't push rogue content without using the defined workflow, because they don't have the secret

[edeandrea]

@all-contributors add @dolfim-ibm for design,ideas,infra,question

[allcontributors]

@edeandrea

I've put up a pull request to add @dolfim-ibm! 🎉

[edeandrea]

@all-contributors please add @ceberam for ideas

[allcontributors]

@edeandrea

I've put up a pull request to add @ceberam! 🎉