Scripts to prepare releases

Version placeholders

Due to CalVer, we need to use placeholders with versionadded and friends. In Scipp, we have tox targets to check for and replace RELEASE_PLACEHOLDER. But this does not work with the release notes which also contain a placeholder in the commented-out template that we don't want to replace.

• Find a way around the release-note template problem (see also below).
• Add tox targets to copier template.
• Use the check target in the release workflow
• Document how to use the prepare release target. (Shouldn't be done automatically because a human should check if it made a mess.)

Release notes

We need to manually remove empty sections in the release notes. I looked into writing a script to do that. But while docutils has a parser for rst, it doesn't have a writer. And similarly, if we switched to markdown files, myst-parser has a parser but also no writer. We could use a generic markdown parser but that might struggle with myst-extensions. Or we use a custom parser which could be complicated. Esp. for rst; markdown should be simpler.

Maybe splitting the release notes into separate documents, one per version, would simplify this. WE discussed this before but never implemented it.

Start by reading the existing tox targets that check and replace RELEASE_PLACEHOLDER, then inspect the copier template and release workflow. Review how release notes contain placeholders in commented-out templates and compare the proposed split-document approach. Done means the template has usable release targets, the workflow runs the check, and the manual preparation process is documented.