[xwiki-devs] Time spent doing the release

Hi devs, Vincent asked me to write down the time I spend doing the release so that we can see what part of the release process needs to be improved. Here's the result: (1) Stabilize the build, making sure all tests pass on CI: up to 4 days (2) Update translations: ~15min (lots of unsignificant changes that have to be reviewed and ignored) (3) Set up the release agent: ~10min (4) Release on Jira, checking opened issues for partial commits, moving or splitting issues: ~30min (it really depends on how many issues have the "Fix Version/s" set to the released version and are not yet closed) (5) Write the release notes: from 2h to a full day (the relatively easy part is scanning closed Jira issues for new features, upgrades, important bugfixes, migration or backward compatibility problems; then you have to push developers to document the new features and the migration problems that they have introduced -- this takes longer) (6) Maven release: ~2h (if everything goes smoothly, otherwise you maybe have to spend an additional 1h to fix cyclic dependencies or bad dependency versions) (7) Collect Clirr report and clean up the release agent: ~10min (8) Paper work (announcements/news): ~1h 30min As you can see the most time consuming is: * stabilizing the build -> committers should check the CI after they commit * writing the release notes -> committers should document their work on XWiki.org before the release day Thanks, Marius P.S.: Kudos to Sergiu and Caleb for the (semi-)automated release script!