doc/sphinx-guides/source/developers/making-releases.rst documents the official process for making release notes but as indicated there, we are experimenting with a process with the following goals:
- As a developer, I want to express in my pull request when an addition to the release notes will be necessary.
- As a developer, I want to be aware of changes that should be made to my dev environment after a pull request has been merged. These could be Solr schema changes or curl commands to reload metadata blocks, for example.
- Create a Markdown file named after your branch (assuming your branch starts with an issue number as requested in doc/sphinx-guides/source/developers/version-control.rst) such as "5053-apis-custom-homepage.md".
- In the file you created, give instructions for non-SQL upgrade steps that must be taken to run the branch in your pull request. Examples include Solr schema updates or reloading metadata blocks. (SQL updates are handled separately as indicated in doc/sphinx-guides/source/developers/sql-upgrade-scripts.rst.)
- At release time, gather all the files into final release notes and make a
git rmcommit to delete them to prevent clutter.