prepare release notes for EasyBuild v4.7.1 + bump version to 4.7.1

Author: SebastianAchilles

RELEASE_NOTES

@@ -4,6 +4,49 @@ For more detailed information, please see the git log.
 These release notes can also be consulted at https://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Release_notes.html.
 
 
+v4.7.1 (March 20th 2023)
+------------------------
+
+update/bugfix release
+
+- various enhancements, including:
+  - add option to make sanity_check_paths arch dependent (#3845)
+  - add support for %(start_dir)s easyconfig template (#4073)
+  - add Ubuntu friendly package naming scheme EasyBuildDebFriendlyPNS (#4115)
+  - allow to directly import constants from easybuild.framework.easyconfig.constants (#4144)
+  - accept single source as dict and single checksum in check_checksums_for (#4180)
+  - add pre/post extension hook (triggered before/after individual extension installations) (#4193)
+  - enforce absolute paths as start dir of extensions (#4196)
+  - print warning when non-existing `start_dir` is specified for extension (#4201)
+  - add support to silence deprecation warning for easyconfigs and toolchains (#4207)
+  - skip directories when fixing shebangs (#4209)
+  - add suport for 'modunloadmsg' easyconfig parameter (#4223)
+- various bug fixes, including:
+  - fix use of `locate` in `check_os_dependency` (#4166)
+  - add VERSION to easybuild.easyblocks namespace in test sandbox (#4171)
+  - also apply filter to asyncprocess test subsuite (#4172)
+  - don't use deprecated SafeConfigParser when running with Python 3.x (#4173)
+  - filter out deprecation warnings for platform.dist in get_os_version and platform.linux_distribution in get_os_name (#4175)
+  - update CI workflows to run 'apt-get update' if installation of packages via 'apt-get install' failed, likely due to stale apt cache (#4176)
+  - fixes for findPythonDeps script (#4179)
+  - check type of versionsuffix value in det_full_ec_version, and raise useful error message if it's not a string (#4184)
+  - avoid GC3Pie deprecation warning (#4185)
+  - correctly restore sys.path in tests (#4186)
+  - suppress output of --skip-test-step test (#4187)
+  - fix flaky test_search_file due to accidental matches for `.*C++` search pattern (#4190)
+  - fix website/docs links in README (#4199)
+  - silence distutils deprecation warnings (#4204)
+  - improve handling of start_dir and add tests for cases where either ext_dir or initial start_dir or both are unset or None (#4206)
+  - restore initial environment before processing each easystack item (#4213)
+  - make test_help_long work on small terminals (#4218)
+- other changes:
+  - use better test assertions by replacing use of assertFalse/assertTrue (#4170)
+  - remove Travis CI configuration file (#4174)
+  - only give read permissions in GitHub Actions workflows (#4182)
+  - replace more usages of assertTrue/False in tests (#4205)
+  - only print "default: " for configuration option of strlist type if default is not empty (#4220)
+
+
 v4.7.0 (January 9th 2023)
 -------------------------
 

easybuild/tools/version.py

@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
 # recent setuptools versions will *TRANSFORM* something like 'X.Y.Zdev' into 'X.Y.Z.dev0', with a warning like
 #   UserWarning: Normalizing '2.4.0dev' to '2.4.0.dev0'
 # This causes problems further up the dependency chain...
-VERSION = LooseVersion('4.7.1.dev0')
+VERSION = LooseVersion('4.7.1')
 UNKNOWN = 'UNKNOWN'