Release process enhancement

[didierofrivia]

Closes #1122

This PR introduces a new process for releasing the Kuadrant operator. It replaces the poorly documented manual way and the error prone automated workflow, by a new automated workflow and a well documented manual one. Both of the processes work around a new manifest named release.yaml, which is the source of truth for our kustomize configs, bundles and helm charts.

release.yaml file format.

This example of the release.yaml file uses tag v1.0.1 as reference.

# FILE: ./release.yaml
kuadrant-operator:
  version: "1.0.1"
olm:
  default-channel: "stable"
  channels:
    - "stable"
dependencies:
  authorino-operator: "0.16.0"
  console-plugin: "0.0.14"
  dns-operator: "0.12.0"
  limitador-operator: "0.12.1"
  wasm-shim: "0.8.1"

The kuadrant-operator section relates to the release version of the kuadrant operator.
While the olm section relates to fields required for building the olm catalogs.
And the dependencies section relates to the released versions of the subcomponents that will be included in a release.
There are validation steps during the make prepare-release that require the dependencies to be release before generating the release of the Kuadrant operator.

How to release Kuadrant Operator

To release a version “vX.Y.Z” of Kuadrant Operator in GitHub and Quay.io, there are two options, a manual and an automated process.
For both processes, first make sure every Kuadrant Operator dependency has been already released.

Automated Workflow

1. Run the GHA Automated Release
   filling the following fields:
   • gitRef: Select the branch/tag/commit where you want to cut a release from.
   • kuadrantOperatorVersion: the Semantic Version of the desired release.
   • authorinoOperatorVersion: Authorino Operator bundle version (X.Y.Z)
   • limitadorOperatorVersion: Limitador Operator bundle version (X.Y.Z)
   • dnsOperatorVersion: DNS Operator bundle version (X.Y.Z)
   • wasmShimVersion: WASM Shim version (X.Y.Z)
   • consolePluginVersion: ConsolePlugin version (X.Y.Z)
   • olmChannel: This will set the OLM channels and default-channel annotations
2. The workflow will create a Pull Request that should be peer-reviewed and approved by a member of the Kuadrant team, focusing on the changes made in Kustomize config, OLM bundles and Helm Charts.
3. Once the PR is merged, a release workflow will be triggered tagging and publishing the Github release
   it will also build the images and packages and publish them on Quay, Helm repository.

Notes

• It's not possible to cherry-pick commits, the workflow will pick a branch/tag/commit and all the history behind to the PR, any modifications should be done in the created PR.

Manual Workflow

Local steps

1. Create the release-vX.Y branch, if the branch does not already exist.
2. Push the release-vX.Y to the remote (kuadrant/kuadrant-operator)
3. Create the release-vX.Y.Z-rc(n) branch with release-vX.Y as the base.
4. Cherry-pick commits to the kudrant-vX.Y.Z-rc(n) from the relevant sources, i.e. main.
5. Update the applicable version in the release.yaml.
6. Run make prepare-release on the release-vX.Y.Z-rc(n). If you run into rate limit errors, set the env GITHUB_TOKEN with your PAT.

Remote steps

1. Open a PR against the release-vX.Y branch with the changes from release-vX.Y.Z-rc(n) branch.
2. PR verification checks will run.
3. Get manual review of PR with focus on changes in these areas:
   • ./bundle.Dockerfile
   • ./bundle
   • ./config
   • ./charts/
4. Merge PR
5. Run the Release Workflow on the release-vX.Y. This does the following:
   • Creates the GitHub release
   • Creates tags
6. Verify that the build release tag workflow is triggered and completes for the new tag.

TODO

• Fix verifications #1197
• Fix release operator workflow, removing needs directive from steps
• alpha releases to check it works as expected
• Fix creation of tag images for releases -> Fix image creation for tag push event #1212

[codecov]

Codecov Report

All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests ✅

Project coverage is 77.46%. Comparing base (2ae754e) to head (1e6ee22).
Report is 68 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #1185      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   83.38%   77.46%   -5.93%     
==========================================
  Files          82       82              
  Lines        7120     7388     +268     
==========================================
- Hits         5937     5723     -214     
- Misses        949     1477     +528     
+ Partials      234      188      -46     

Flag	Coverage Δ
bare-k8s-integration	28.77% <ø> (+5.35%)	⬆️
controllers-integration	77.08% <ø> (+2.80%)	⬆️
envoygateway-integration	43.98% <ø> (+2.34%)	⬆️
gatewayapi-integration	22.84% <ø> (+2.79%)	⬆️
istio-integration	47.16% <ø> (+3.14%)	⬆️
unit	18.37% <ø> (-0.72%)	⬇️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

Components	Coverage Δ
api/v1beta1 (u)	90.78% <ø> (ø)
api/v1beta2 (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
pkg/common (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
pkg/istio (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
pkg/log (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
pkg/reconcilers (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
pkg/rlptools (u)	∅ <ø> (∅)
controllers (i)	∅ <ø> (∅)

see 148 files with indirect coverage changes

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[Boomatang]

Looking good to me