prepare release notes for EasyBuild v4.5.3 + bump version to 4.5.3

Author: migueldiascosta

RELEASE_NOTES

@@ -4,6 +4,26 @@ 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.
 
 
+v4.5.3 (February 11th 2022)
+---------------------------
+
+update/bugfix release
+
+- various enhancements, including:
+  - also check for git in --check-eb-deps (#3954)
+  - add end2end test for 'eb --containerize' (#3958)
+- various bug fixes, including:
+  - take into account that patch files can also be zipped when checking filename extension for patches (#3936)
+  - initialize BACKUP_PKG_URL in install_eb_dep.sh with empty string (#3939)
+  - fix get_os_name and get_os_version to avoid reporting UNKNOWN in output of eb --show-system-info (#3942)
+  - consistently use actions/setup-python (#3944)
+  - switch to using pip3 for installing EasyBuild in Singularity definition file generated by EasyBuild (#3945)
+  - specify easybuild.io as EasyBuild homepage in setup.py (#3947)
+  - avoid crash in get_os_version on modern SLES-based OSs (#3955)
+- other changes:
+  - indicate compatibility with Python 3.10 in setup.py (#3940)
+
+
 v4.5.2 (January 24th 2022)
 --------------------------
 

easybuild/tools/version.py

@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@
 # 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('4.5.3.dev0')
+VERSION = LooseVersion('4.5.3')
 UNKNOWN = 'UNKNOWN'