Release candidate (Tuesday, Feb 19)

• Ensure all new features are tracked via telemetry
• Announce the code freeze
• Create a branch against master for a pull request
• Update the version in package.json
• Run npm install to make sure package-lock.json is up-to-date
• Update CHANGELOG.md
  • Create a new section for this release
  • Run news (typically python news --final | code-insiders -)
  • Touch up news entries
  • Copy over the "Thanks" section from the previous release and make sure it's up-to-date
• Update ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt by running tpn (typically python tpn --npm package-lock.json --npm-overrides package.datascience-ui.dependencies.json --config tpn/distribution.toml ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt)
• Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt as appropriate
• Merge pull request into master
• Delete the release branch in the repo
• Create a new release branch from master
• Bump the version number to the next release in the master branch
  • package.json
  • package-lock.json
• Announce the code freeze is over
• Update Component Governance
  • Provide details for any automatically detected npm dependencies
  • Manually add any PyPI or repository dependencies
• Open appropriate documentation issues
• Begin drafting a blog post

Final (Tuesday, Feb 26)

Preparation

• Make sure the appropriate pull requests for the documentation -- including the WOW page -- are ready
• Create a branch against release for a pull request
• Update the version in package.json
• 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 running tpn (typically python tpn --npm package-lock.json --npm-overrides package.datascience-ui.dependencies.json --config tpn/distribution.toml ThirdPartyNotices-Distribution.txt; quite possible there will be no change)
• Update ThirdPartyNotices-Repository.txt manually if necessary
• Merge pull request into release
• Make sure component governance is happy

Release

• Make sure CI is passing
• Generate the final .vsix file
• Make sure no extraneous files are being included in the .vsix file (make sure to check for hidden files)
• Upload the final .vsix file to the marketplace
• Publish documentation changes
• Publish the blog post
• Create a release on GitHub (which creates an appropriate git tag)
• Determine if a hotfix is needed
• Merge release back into master

Prep for the next release

• Bump the version number to the next dev
• Create a new release plan

Clean up after this release

• Clean up any straggling fixed issues needing validation
• Go through needs more info issues and close any that have no activity for over a month