add docs release process

[csantanapr]

Add docs info for the folks cutting the knative release to also cut the docs/spec for the website.

Related to knative/community#429

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[csantanapr]

/assign @vaikas

[csantanapr]

/assign @tcnghia

[rhuss]

Are the release leads supposed to perform the documentation release after all other repos have been released ?

How it is ensured that the release leads have the proper permissions for doing this ? (i.e. who is contacting @carieshmarie or @RichieEscarez for setting the SSH keys for Netlify and GitHub ?)

[RichieEscarez]

Hi Roland,

A1: Yes, wait for /Serving and /Eventing (see steps below).

A2: You dont necessarily need elevated permissions or special SSH keys but having Approval privileges for the /Docs and /Website repos helps ease the process (just requires the "releaser" to get an LGTM).

Today, Netlify and GitHub just work. You dont need to touch Netlify, the knative.dev builds automatically run, pickup, and show whatever is merged in GitHub (from both /docs and /website repos). I was able to hand off the process to both @csantanapr and @omerbensaadon (who "released" the last two versions).

General steps

As a minimum example, here are the two PRs from the last release, that you can use to "cut and publish a new release":

1. Wait for dependent repos to release (today thats /serving and /eventing), then generate the new API docs and merge them before creating a new branch: Releasing v0.22.0 docs#3426
2. Create the new /docs branch: https://knative.dev/help/maintainer/docs-release-process/#create-branch-from-updated-main
3. Add the new /docs branch to the website builds: Releasing 0.22 website#287

With that said, the user experience team is completely changing the Docs build and publishing process but they are defining/driving that effort and can help you understand whats changed (ie the new steps to cut a release).

[RichieEscarez]

Adding a step #4:

4. Sync the knative/website staging branch to include all the same commits as main: Update the Staging branch website#297

[evankanderson]

/assign @shinigambit @evankanderson

This looks like an opportunity to do some paired review with Fabian, will look at this later today or maybe tomorrow.

[evankanderson]

Hi Carlos,

I think we should move "Release docs" up next to "Release a repository" (maybe at the bottom of that section), and add a note near the top of "release a repository" that docs follows a special process.

We should probably also update the timeline to indicate that Docs follows a special process, but that it doesn't need to be skipped -- right now it's in a "skip these" block.

[csantanapr]

replaced by #19