New Release tictoc

The following are the steps that need to be taken as part of a new release of .NET Aspire.

Things to do before release day

• Share steps with validation team on how to acquire the release candidate.
• Define who is writing the blog post for the announcement.
• Ensure the blog post author checks with area owners for features that should be mentioned.
• Start the process of updating the API Docs by using this template
• Ensure all features have been signed off in all compliance aspects (privacy, globalization, security, accessibility)

Things to do on release day

• Generate NuGet API Tokens
• Ship packages to NuGet
  • ServiceDiscovery packages should be shipped with the dotnetframework NuGet org
  • Aspire.* packages should be shipped with the Aspire org token
• Submit a PR to update our supported policy to the website repo
• Submit a PR to update the templates in the relevant Visual Studio versions
• Submit a PR in the dotnet-docker repo to update the dashboard Docker image. (Run dotnet run --project ./eng/update-dependencies -- from-channel 8104 https://github.com/dotnet/aspire to change it)
• Ship Blog Post
• Ship Api Docs
• Update the aka.ms/aspire/update link to point to latest package version update instructions (which is displayed on banner from the dashboard)
• Merge changes from internal branch (if applicable) and tag the release commit.
• Create a new GitHub release based on that tag.
• Promote the final build to the GA channel so aspire update --self works (To do this, run darc add-build-to-channel --id <BuildID> --channel 'Aspire 9.x GA')
• Create a PR to update our https://github.com/dotnet/aspire-samples and https://github.com/dotnet/eshop repositories
• Push all packages to our public dotnet-public repo by queuing a build from this pipeline
• Send a PR into main branch to update Package Validation version to match the published version
• Publish VS Code extension to marketplace
  1. Trigger the extension release workflow, which will open a PR updating the version and changelog. Wait for the generate release notes agentic workflow to finish, which will update the changelog in the draft PR
  2. Approve and merge that PR into main, and either kick off a manual build of microsoft-aspire main branch or wait for the next batched build
  3. Ensure you are a contributor or owner to the marketplace publisher
  4. Generate an azdo PAT with the "Publish" Marketplace permission, if you have not already done so within the past week
  5. Set VscePublishToken to that PAT on this variable group
  6. Follow the remaining release instructions in the generated PR. An example can be found here