ci: publish the release notes as the GitHub release body

[craigmcchesney]

What

Adopt dp-grpc's release-notes convention: one version-controlled document per release at doc/release-notes/rel-X.Y.Z.md, published as the GitHub release body via body_path. Ahead of the 1.16.0 release (notes not yet written).

Two things that shaped the implementation

dp-python-lib's release.yml differs from dp-grpc's single-job workflow in ways that make a direct copy of the pattern wrong:

1. body_path overrides body — it is not a companion. In action-gh-release, releaseBody() returns the file contents and falls back to the body input only if the read fails. This workflow already sets a body with artifact verification and install instructions, so simply adding body_path beside it would have silently dropped those instructions from every release. They are concatenated with the notes instead, into dist/RELEASE_BODY.md.

2. The publish job never checks out the repo. It only downloads artifacts, so a path under doc/ does not exist there. The body is assembled in the build job (which does check out) and rides along in the dist/ upload. It is excluded from the release files list — it is the body, not a download — and from the PyPI job's upload set, which would otherwise reject it.

generate_release_notes: true still composes on top: the action appends its generated commit list after whatever body it resolves.

Fail early on missing notes

The notes check runs before the build rather than being left to action-gh-release, which fails on a missing body_path only after everything has been built, signed, and uploaded — a late failure that reads as unrelated to its cause. A workflow_dispatch rehearsal has no rel- tag to derive a filename from, so it skips the check.

Verification

Extracted both step scripts from the YAML and ran them directly:

• Assembled body renders correctly — heredoc indentation stripped, fenced code blocks intact, backslash continuations and the cert-identity interpolation preserved.
• Notes check exits 0 with the notes present, and exits 1 with the actionable message without them.
• Workflow parses as YAML; SHA-pin invariant (grep check from CLAUDE.md) still returns nothing; ruff lint/format and the cookbook snippet checker all pass.

CLAUDE.md documents the convention, including the body_path-overrides-body trap and the write-notes-before-tagging requirement.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_0151QFCHYMNBgEVNGLTgsoFL

[Copilot]

🔵 Needs a closer look

Release workflow changes affect artifact assembly and publication behavior, warranting final human review.

Pull request overview

Updates the release workflow to publish versioned release notes while preserving release instructions.

Changes:

• Validate release notes before tagged builds.
• Assemble the combined release body.
• Publish it via body_path and exclude it from package uploads.

File summaries

File	Description
CLAUDE.md	Documents release-note conventions and workflow behavior.
.github/workflows/release.yml	Validates, assembles, and publishes release notes.

Review details

• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 0
• Review effort level: Lite

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