docs: Add dependency and version change guidelines

[ianna]

Added guidelines for managing dependencies and version changes to ensure stability in the Awkward ecosystem.

[github-actions]

The documentation preview is ready to be viewed at http://preview.awkward-array.org.s3-website.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/PR3745

[ianna]

@pfackeldey and @ariostas - please check. Thanks!

[ianna]

@pfackeldey and @ariostas — please let me know if you would like to add anything to this. Thanks!

[pfackeldey]

I haven't ever seen a PR from a non-maintainer that changed the pyproject.toml dependencies of awkward-array, and if so it's easy to notice by us as reviewers.
Personally, I think it's better to not bloat the contribution guidelines, otherwise they become too long and no-one wants to spend >5min reading this before doing a PR. To be clear: contribution guidelines are good, but they also should be concise and encouraging, and not give the feeling of a hurdle to contribute.
To be quite honest, this PR feels more like a minor rebuke for #3739.

(Apart from that this reads a bit AI-generated/generic, and has weird formatting with • chars. In markdown you can use newlines with - to start a bullet point list.)

[ianna]

I haven't ever seen a PR from a non-maintainer that changed the pyproject.toml dependencies of awkward-array, and if so it's easy to notice by us as reviewers. Personally, I think it's better to not bloat the contribution guidelines, otherwise they become too long and no-one wants to spend >5min reading this before doing a PR. To be clear: contribution guidelines are good, but they also should be concise and encouraging, and not give the feeling of a hurdle to contribute. To be quite honest, this PR feels more like a minor rebuke for #3739.

I hear your concern, though I don’t think it’s fair to frame this as a “rebuke.” The intent here is not to single out past contributions but to clarify expectations going forward.

While it’s true that changes to pyproject.toml from non‑maintainers are rare and easy to catch in review, the value of guidelines is in setting a shared baseline. Concise and welcoming guidelines are important, but they also need to cover the essentials so contributors know what’s expected without relying solely on reviewers to catch issues.

My preference is to keep the guidelines lightweight but still explicit enough to prevent misunderstandings. That way they remain encouraging while also reducing the chance of friction later.

(Apart from that this reads a bit AI-generated/generic, and has weird formatting with • chars. In markdown you can use newlines with - to start a bullet point list.)

Yeah, I ran it through AI mainly for a quick spell‑check and polish. Looks like it added those bullets along the way. Thanks for catching that. I’ll switch them to proper markdown lists so it’s cleaner.

[ianna]

@pfackeldey - thanks for checking! Your comments have been addressed. Thanks.