Updated release process (#4239)

Signed-off-by: Ciaran Johnston <[email protected]>

Author: ciaranjohnston

release/README.md

@@ -1,42 +1,16 @@
 # Releasing
 
-## Steps
-
 To cut a new kpt release perform the following:
 
-- Ensure kpt is importing the latest dependent releases
-  - [cli-utils](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cli-utils/tree/master/release)
-  - Within kustomize:
-    [kyaml](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/blob/master/releasing)
-  - Within kustomize:
-    [cmd/config](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kustomize/blob/master/releasing)
-  - Update `go.mod` file with correct versions of `cli-utils`, `kyaml`, and
-    `cmd/config`
-  - Run `make all` (which should update `go.sum` and run `go mod tidy`)
-  - Create a `kpt` PR with previous `go.mod` and `go.sum` changes, and submit.
-    [Example PR](https://github.com/kptdev/kpt/pull/594)
-- Fetch the latest master changes to a clean branch
-  - `git checkout -b release`
-  - `git fetch upstream`
-  - `git reset --hard upstream/master`
-- Tag the commit
-  - `git tag v1.0.0-(alpha|beta|rc).*`
-  - `git push upstream v1.0.0-(alpha|beta|rc).*`
-- This will trigger a Github Action that will use goreleaser to make the
-  release. The result will be a github release in the draft state and upload
-  docker images to GCR.
-  - Verify that the release looks good. If it does, publish the release through
-    the github UI.
-- Update the Homebrew release
-  - `go run ./release/formula/main.go <tag>` (example: `go run ./release/formula/main.go v1.0.0-beta.31`)
-  - `git add . && git commit -m "update homebrew to <tag>"`
-  - create a PR for this change and merge it
-  - [example PR](https://github.com/kptdev/kpt/pull/331/commits/baf33d8ed214f2c5e106ec6e963ad736e5ff4d98#diff-d69e3adb302ee3e84814136422cbf872)
-
-## Artifacts
+- Check that dependencies are up to date and that all required release content is in the main branch
+- Navigate to [the project release page](https://github.com/kptdev/kpt/releases) and select "draft new release"
+- Leave the target as "main", and create a new tag to match the release version
+  - Versioning follows [semantic versioning rules](http://semver.org/)
+  - Alpha and beta versions are used to make releases before content is fully stabilized
+  - Increment the number after "alpha" or "beta" by one when making this type of release - e.g. v1.0.0-beta.58 could come after v1.0.0-beta.57
+- Release title should be left blank - it will be auto-filled from the tag
+- Click "Generate release notes" to auto-generate the content of the release. Edit this as appropriate to add extra context
+- If the release is an alpha or beta release and there is already a stable version available, the "set as a pre-release" check-box should be checked. Otherwise, leave it checked as "set as the latest release"
+- Check the "create a discussion for this release" check-box
+- Click "publish" and then verify that the github action has run and the artefacts have been produced
 
-Release artifacts such as binaries and images will be built automatically by the
-Github Action. The binaries linked from the README.md docs will be automatically
-updated because they point to the `latest` binaries which are updated for tagged
-releases. Images created from the `main` branch will not be tagged with
-`latest`.