### Description
Pattern matching was [recently added](https://github.com/hashicorp/crt-orchestrator/pull/51) so that teams no longer have to explicitly list every branch that should trigger the CRT pipeline. This simplifies release preparation- anytime a new release branch is created, it will produce releasable artifacts and exercise the full pipeline.
### Testing & Reproduction steps
This has been tested in multiple projects since being rolled out. There are no nomad-specific tests that need to be done.
### Links
PR where this functionality was added: https://github.com/hashicorp/crt-orchestrator/pull/51
### PR Checklist
* [ ] updated test coverage
* [ ] external facing docs updated
* [X] not a security concern
During the release there are several files that need to be modified:
- .release/ci.hcl: the notification channel needs to be updated to a
channel with greater team visibility during the release.
- version/version.go: the Version and VersionPrerelease variables
need to be set so they match the release version.
After the release these files need to be reverted.
For GA releases the following additional changes also need to happen:
- version/version.go: the Version variable needs to be bumped to the
next version number.
- GNUMakefile: the LAST_RELEASE variable needs to be set to the
version that was just released.
Since the release process will commit file changes to the branch being
used for the release, it should _never_ run on main, so the first step
is now to protect against that.
It also adds a validation to make the user input version is correct.
After looking at the different release options and steps I noticed that
automatic CHANGELOG generation is actually the exception, so it would be
better to have the default to be false.
Piotr Kazmierczak