chore: add release documentation (numaproj#155)

Signed-off-by: a3hadi <[email protected]>

development.md

@@ -39,20 +39,11 @@ Note: before running the script, ensure that through the CLI, you are logged int
 
 After confirming that your changes pass local testing:
 1. Clean up testing artifacts (remove any `dist/` folders created, remove any test images on quay.io, etc.)
-2. Create a PR for your changes. Once your PR has been merged, a Github Actions workflow (Docker Publish) will be triggered, to build, tag (with `stable`), and push
+2. Create a PR for your changes. Once your PR has been merged, a Github Actions workflow (`Docker Publish`) will be triggered, to build, tag (with `stable`), and push
 all example images. This ensures that all example images are using the most up-to-date version of the SDK, i.e. the one including your
 changes
 
-### Before Release
-
-Before releasing a new SDK version, make sure to update all references from the old version to the new one. For example,
-the version in the root `pyproject.toml` should be updated (for [reference](https://github.com/numaproj/numaflow-python/commit/6a720e7c56121a45b94aa929c6b720312dd9340a)), 
-which can be done by running `poetry version <new-version>`.
-After making these changes, create a PR. Once merged, it will trigger the Docker Publish workflow, and should be included in the release.
-As a result, the correct SDK version will always be printed in the server information logs, and
-the example images will always be using the latest changes (due to referencing the local SDK tarball that is built).
-
 ### Adding a New Example
 
-If you add a new example, in order for it to be used by the Docker Publish workflow, add its path
-to the `example_directories` matrix in `build-push.yaml`.
+If you add a new example, in order for it to be used by the `Docker Publish` workflow, add its path
+to the `example_directories` matrix in `.github/workflows/build-push.yaml`.

releases.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+# Release Guide
+
+This document explains the release process for the Python SDK. You can find the most recent version under [Github Releases](https://github.com/numaproj/numaflow-python/releases).
+
+### Before Release
+
+1. Before releasing a new SDK version, make sure to update all references from the old version to the new one. For example,
+the version in the root `pyproject.toml` should be updated (for [reference](https://github.com/numaproj/numaflow-python/commit/6a720e7c56121a45b94aa929c6b720312dd9340a))
+   - The version in the root `pyproject.toml` 
+   can be updated by running `poetry version <version-bump-rule | PEP440-string>`. The version bump rules that can be provided and their corresponding effects can be found [here](https://python-poetry.org/docs/cli/#version),
+   in the `Poetry` documentation. A version number can also be directly specified instead, but it must follow the [PEP 440](https://peps.python.org/pep-0440/) specification
+2. If the version to be released has backwards incompatible changes, i.e. it does not support older versions of the Numaflow platform,
+you must update the `MINIMUM_NUMAFLOW_VERSION` constant in the `pynumaflow/info/types.py` file to the minimum Numaflow version that is supported by your new SDK version
+3. After making these changes, create a PR. Once merged, it will trigger the `Docker Publish` workflow, and should be included in the release.
+As a result, the correct SDK version will always be printed in the server information logs, and
+the example images will always be using the latest changes (due to referencing the local SDK tarball that is built)
+
+### How to Release
+
+This can be done via the Github UI. 
+1. In the `Releases` section of the Python SDK repo, click `Draft a new release`
+2. Create a tag that has the same name as the version that you specified in the root 
+`pyproject.toml`, prefix it with a `'v'`, and select it
+3. Make the title the same as the tag 
+4. Click `Generate release notes` so that 
+all the changes made since the last release are documented. If there are any major features or breaking changes that you would like to highlight as part of the release, 
+add those to the description as well
+5. Select `Set as the latest release` or `Set as a pre-release`, depending on your situation
+6. Finally, click `Publish release`, and your version tag will be the newest release on the repository