Release Checklist v25.02

[caryr35]

Release Checklist for v25.02:

Status	Task	Start	End	Owner
Pre-release
	Notification to team of last feature sprint in milestone	2025-01-20	2024-01-31	@mattahrens
	Burndown (no new features for current release)	2025-02-02	2025-02-14	Team
	Update docs for current release in spark-rapids without updating release links	2025-02-10	2025-02-14	Team
	Create a PR to update release links	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@nvliyuan
	Get RAPIDS 25.04 cudf java build working.	2025-01-27	2025-01-31	@NvTimLiu
	Create 25.04 branch including spark-rapids-{jni,private} and spark-rapids	2025-01-20	2025-01-24	@NvTimLiu
	Automerge from 25.02 to 25.04	2025-01-20	2025-01-24	@NvTimLiu
	Enable Jenkins builds (premerge, nightly, integration, performance) for 25.04	2025-01-20	2025-01-24	@NvTimLiu
	[spark-rapids-private 25.02] Java release to sonatype	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	[spark-rapids-jni 25.02] Java release to sonatype	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	[cudf 25.02] Java release to sonatype	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	Notify RAPIDS team of javadocs for 25.02	2025-02-17	2025-02-17	@GaryShen2008
Staging release
	Make 25.04 the default branch	2025-02-10	2025-02-10	@GaryShen2008
	Enable static scanning on the new 25.04 branches	2025-02-26	2025-02-26	@GaryShen2008
	Merge all remaining branch-25.02 PRs	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	Team
	Update spark-rapids-jni dependency version	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	Create CHANGELOG.md	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	Deliver Snapshot packages to QA	2025-02-10	2025-02-10	@NvTimLiu
	Create a PR (not squashed) to merge from branch-25.02 to main. Needs review from repository owner	2025-02-14	2025-02-14	@NvTimLiu
	Trigger the release for spark-rapids Jenkins job on the main branch and deploy the jar to sonatype staging (including spark-rapids-tools/core)	2025-02-18	2025-02-18	@NvTimLiu
	Deliver final packages to QA	2025-02-18	2025-02-18	@NvTimLiu
	Run integration tests on staging jars with AQE on, UCX on, Databricks Azure, Databricks AWS, Dataproc	2025-02-18	2025-02-21	@NvTimLiu
	Run LHA tests on staging jars	2025-02-18	2025-02-21	@NvTimLiu
	CDH testing(skip)	2025-02-18	2025-02-20	@NvTimLiu
	QA testing with Snapshot on YARN, NGC with Volta and Ampere	2025-02-10	2025-02-18	@johnzhong
	~~Run pre-processing workflow for DLRM sample use case	2025-02-14	2025-02-18	@johnzhong
	QA testing with final packages on YARN, NGC with Volta and Ampere	2025-02-18	2025-02-21	@johnzhong
Release
	Tag the release and deploy the staging artifacts to maven central repository	2025-02-26	2025-02-26	@NvTimLiu
	Update gh-pages	2025-02-17	2025-02-26	@nvliyuan
	Test spark-rapids-examples repo with Spark-Rapids 25.02	2025-02-17	2025-02-26	@nvliyuan
	Update docs for current release in spark-rapids-examples	2025-02-17	2025-02-26	@nvliyuan
	Update tools notebooks on Databricks and EMR for current release in spark-rapids-examples	2025-02-17	2025-02-26	@nvliyuan
	Update spark-rapids.sh in https://github.com/GoogleCloudDataproc/initialization-actions/tree/master/spark-rapids for the plugin	2025-02-17	2025-02-26	@nvliyuan

[NvTimLiu]

To avoid the overlap of Chinese New Year Holiday, update the Start/End Dates to (2025-01-20 to 2025-01-24) for the tasks related to creating branch-25.02 and setting up CI/CD for the rapids-JNI, rapids-private, and spark-rapids repos.