Support non-tag based krel release-notes workflow

[Vyom-Yadav]

What would you like to be added:

Add support for workflow based on the state of git tree and not just the tag. Since force pushing to Kubernetes master is very rare, there won't be any overwritten commits. So, 'commit to commit' tracking can be possibly done.

This would basically mean changes to this function:

release/cmd/krel/cmd/release_notes.go

Lines 966 to 995 in 7eb5611

	// gatherNotesFrom gathers all the release notes from the specified startTag up to --tag.
	func gatherNotesFrom(repoPath, startTag string) (*notes.ReleaseNotes, error) {
	logrus.Infof("Gathering release notes from %s to %s", startTag, releaseNotesOpts.tag)
	notesOptions := options.New()
	notesOptions.Branch = git.DefaultBranch
	notesOptions.RepoPath = repoPath
	notesOptions.StartRev = startTag
	notesOptions.EndRev = releaseNotesOpts.tag
	notesOptions.Debug = logrus.StandardLogger().Level >= logrus.DebugLevel
	notesOptions.MapProviderStrings = releaseNotesOpts.mapProviders
	notesOptions.ListReleaseNotesV2 = releaseNotesOpts.listReleaseNotesV2
	notesOptions.AddMarkdownLinks = true
	notesOptions.IncludeLabels = releaseNotesOpts.includeLabels
	if err := notesOptions.ValidateAndFinish(); err != nil {
	return nil, err
	}
	logrus.Infof("Using start tag %v", startTag)
	logrus.Infof("Using end tag %v", releaseNotesOpts.tag)
	// Fetch the notes
	releaseNotes, err := notes.GatherReleaseNotes(notesOptions)
	if err != nil {
	return nil, fmt.Errorf("gathering release notes: %w", err)
	}
	return releaseNotes, nil
	}

Have the existing option to define 'until' using a tag or a commit.

krel would be required to store the state of the last processed commit in the session file as a caching mechanism.

Why is this needed:

Currently, the krel release-notes generation is conditional on a tag for that version being present in the upstream Kubernetes repository.

This causes a delay in the release notes generation as the docs subteam in the Kubernetes release team can't start the generation of release notes until the tag is published, which happens when that version of Kubernetes is published.

Having this feature would allow the docs team to start the release notes generation earlier.

[saschagrunert]

Thank you for the feature request @Vyom-Yadav, I think this is a good addition to the existing workflow by increasing the usage flexibility. Do you plan to contribute it or have someone in mind who would like to?

[Vyom-Yadav]

Do you plan to contribute it

Not with my current pending commitments, unfortunately (I'll still try down the line).

have someone in mind who would like to

Not really, maybe someone from the docs subteam in the release team would be interested. cc @Urvashi0109 (Docs lead for v1.35)

[Urvashi0109]

Do you plan to contribute it

Not with my current pending commitments, unfortunately (I'll still try down the line).

have someone in mind who would like to

Not really, maybe someone from the docs subteam in the release team would be interested. cc @Urvashi0109 (Docs lead for v1.35)

Thanks a lot for considering me. At the moment, I’m pretty occupied with this release, and some other work. I may not be able to contribute right now, but I’d be happy to revisit this in the future. 😊