Create contributing guide

Add a CONTRIBUTING.md guide explaining how to build, test, setup
a development environment and release the library.

Also mention the contributing guide in the README.md and add a
RELEASE_NOTES template, so when releasing new versions is easy to clear
the release notes by just copying the template.

Signed-off-by: Leandro Lucarella <[email protected]>

Author: llucax

.github/RELEASE_NOTES.template.md

@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+# Release Notes
+
+## Summary
+
+<!-- Here goes a general summary of what this release is about -->
+
+## Upgrading
+
+<!-- Here goes notes on how to upgrade from previous versions, including if there are any depractions and what they should be replaced with --> 
+
+## New Features
+
+<!-- Here goes the main new features and examples or instructions on how to use them -->
+
+## Bug Fixes
+
+<!-- Here goes notable bug fixes that are worth a special mention or explanation -->

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -0,0 +1,83 @@
+# Contributing to `frequenz-sdk`
+
+## Build
+
+You can use `build` to simply build the source and binary distribution:
+
+```sh
+python -m pip install build
+python -m build
+```
+
+## Local development
+
+You can use editable installs to develop the project locally (it will install
+all the dependencies too):
+
+```sh
+python -m pip install -e .
+```
+
+You can also use `nox` to run the tests and other checks:
+
+```sh
+python -m pip install nox
+nox
+```
+
+You can also use `nox -R` to reuse the current testing environment to speed up
+test at the expense of a higher chance to end up with a dirty test environment.
+
+### Running tests individually
+
+For a better development test cycle you can install the runtime and test
+dependencies and run `pytest` manually.
+
+```sh
+python -m pip install .
+python -m pip install pytest pytest-asyncio
+
+# And for example
+pytest tests/test_sdk.py
+```
+
+## Releasing
+
+These are the steps to create a new release:
+
+1. Get the latest head you want to create a release from.
+
+2. Update the `RELEASE_NOTES.md` file if it is not complete, up to date, and
+   clean from template comments (`<!-- ... ->`) and empty sections. Submit
+   a pull request if an update is needed, wait until it is merged, and update
+   the latest head you want to create a release from to get the new merged pull
+   request.
+
+3. Create a new signed tag using the release notes and
+   a [semver](https://semver.org/) compatible version number with a `v` prefix,
+   for example:
+
+   ```sh
+   git tag -s -F RELEASE_NOTES.md v0.0.1
+   ```
+
+4. Push the new tag.
+
+5. A GitHub action will test the tag and if all goes well it will create
+   a [GitHub
+   Release](https://github.com/frequenz-floss/frequenz-sdk-python/releases),
+   create a new
+   [announcement](https://github.com/frequenz-floss/frequenz-sdk-python/discussions/categories/announcements)
+   about the release, and upload a new package to
+   [PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/frequenz-sdk/) automatically.
+
+6. Once this is done, reset the `RELEASE_NOTES.md` with the template:
+
+   ```sh
+   cp .github/RELEASE_NOTES.template.md RELEASE_NOTES.md
+   ```
+
+   Commit the new release notes and create a PR (this step should be automated
+   eventually too).
+
+7. Celebrate!

README.md

@@ -2,44 +2,13 @@
 
 A development kit to interact with the Frequenz development platform.
 
-## Testing locally
-
-### Prerequisites
-
-#### Python version
+## Supported Python versions
 
 * For x86_64 Python 3.8 - 3.10 are supported (tested).
 * For arm64 only Python 3.8 is supported (due to some dependencies that only support 3.8).
 
-#### Development setup
-
-You need to install the following development dependencies to be able to get
-and build all dependencies:
-
-```sh
-python -m pip install grpcio-tools mypy-protobuf nox wheel
-```
-
-### Running the whole test suite
-
-Run the following command to run tests:
-
-```sh
-nox
-```
-
-You can also use `nox -R` to reuse the current testing environment to speed up
-test at the expense of a higher chance to end up with a dirty test environment.
-
-### Running tests individually
-
-For a better development test cycle you can install the runtime and test
-dependencies and run `pytest` manually.
-
-```sh
-python -m pip install .
-python -m pip install pytest pytest-asyncio
+## Contributing
 
-# And for example
-pytest tests/test_sdk.py
-```
+If you want to know how to build this project and contribute to it, please
+check out the [Contributing
+Guide](https://github.com/frequenz-floss/frequenz-sdk-python/CONTRIBUTING.md).