All dates should align with VS Code's iteration and endgame plans.

• Announce the feature freeze on both Teams and e-mail, leave enough time for teams to surface any last minute issues that need to get in before freeze. Make sure debugger and Language Server teams are looped in as well.

• Update main for the release
  • Change the version in package.json to the next even number (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (🤖)
  • Check pypi.org and update the version of debugpy in install_debugpy.py if necessary.
  • Update languageServerVersion in package.json to point to the latest version of the Language Server. Check with the language server team if this needs updating (🤖)
  • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
    • Run news (typically python news --final --update CHANGELOG.md | code-insiders -)
    • Copy over the "Thanks" section from the previous release into the "Thanks" section for the new release
    • Make sure the "Thanks" section is up-to-date (e.g. compare to versions in requirements.txt)
    • Touch up news entries (e.g. add missing periods)
    • Check the Markdown rendering to make sure everything looks good
    • Add any relevant news entries for debugpy and the language server if they were updated
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (Notes for this process are in the Team OneNote under Python VS Code → Dev Process → Third-Party Notices / TPN file)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt as appropriate. This file is manually edited so you can check with the teams if anything needs to be added here.
  • Merge pull request into main
• Create the release branch
  • If there are release branches that are two versions old (e.g. release-2020.[minor - 2]) you can delete them at this time
  • Create a new release/YYYY.minor branch from main
• Update main post-release (🤖)
  • Bump the minor version number to the next ("YYYY.[minor+1]") release in the main branch to an odd number (🤖)
    • package.json
    • package-lock.json
  • Create a pull request against main
  • Merge pull request into main
• Announce the code freeze is over on the same channels
• Update Component Governance (Notes are in the team OneNote under Python VS Code → Dev Process → Component Governance).
  • Make sure there are no active alerts
  • Manually add any repository/embedded/CG-incompatible dependencies
• Open appropriate documentation issues
• Begin drafting a blog post. Contact the PM team for this.

• Make sure the appropriate pull requests for the documentation -- including the WOW page -- are ready
• Final updates to the release-YYYY.minor branch
  • Create a branch against release-YYYY.minor for a pull request
  • Update the version in package.json to remove the -rc (🤖)
  • Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date (the only update should be the version number if package-lock.json has been kept up-to-date) (🤖)
    • Update CHANGELOG.md (🤖)
      • Update version and date for the release section
      • Run news and copy-and-paste new entries (typically python news --final | code-insiders -; quite possibly nothing new to add)
  • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by using https://tools.opensource.microsoft.com/notice (🤖; see team notes)
    • Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt manually if necessary
    • Create pull request against release-YYYY.minor (🤖)
    • Merge pull request into release-YYYY.minor

• Make sure CI is passing (🤖)
• Create a GitHub release (🤖)
  • Start creating a new release
  • Make the tag match the version of the released extension
  • Copy the changelog entry into the release as the description
• Run the CD pipeline
• Publish documentation changes
• Publish the blog post
• Determine if a hotfix is needed
• Merge the release branch back into main. Don't overwrite the main branch version. (🤖)

• Create a new release plan (🤖)
• (Un-)pin release plan issues (🤖)