Release Checklist v24.12

[caryr35]

Release Checklist for v24.12:

Status	Task	Start	End	Owner
Pre-release
	Notification to team of last feature sprint in milestone	2024-11-11	2024-11-22	@mattahrens
	Burndown (no new features for current release)	2024-11-25	2024-12-06	Team
	Update docs for current release in spark-rapids without updating release links	2024-12-02	2024-12-06	Team
	Create a PR to update release links	2024-12-13	2024-12-13	@nvliyuan
	Get RAPIDS 25.02 cudf java build working.	2024-11-18	2024-11-22	@NvTimLiu
	Create 25.02 branch including spark-rapids-{jni,private} and spark-rapids	2024-11-21	2024-11-22	@NvTimLiu
	Automerge from 24.12 to 25.02	2024-11-21	2024-11-22	@NvTimLiu
	Enable Jenkins builds (premerge, nightly, integration, performance) for 24.12	2024-11-21	2024-12-06	@NvTimLiu
	[spark-rapids-private 24.12] Java release to sonatype	2024-12-13	2024-12-13	@NvTimLiu
	[spark-rapids-jni 24.12] Java release to sonatype	2024-12-13	2024-12-13	@NvTimLiu
	[cudf 24.12] Java release to sonatype	2024-12-13	2024-12-13	@NvTimLiu
	Notify RAPIDS team of javadocs for 24.12	2024-12-16	2024-12-16	@GaryShen2008
Staging release
	Make 25.02 the default branch	2024-12-02	2024-12-02	@jlowe
	Enable static scanning on the new 25.02 branches	2024-12-19	2024-12-19	@GaryShen2008
	Merge all remaining branch-24.12 PRs	2024-12-06	2024-12-06	Team
	Update spark-rapids-jni dependency version	2024-12-11	2024-12-11	@NvTimLiu
	Create CHANGELOG.md	2024-12-06	2024-12-06	@NvTimLiu
	Deliver Snapshot packages to QA	2024-12-02	2024-12-02	@NvTimLiu
	Create a PR (not squashed) to merge from branch-24.12 to main. Needs review from repository owner	2024-12-13	2024-12-13	@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)	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@NvTimLiu
	Deliver final packages to QA	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@NvTimLiu
	Run integration tests on staging jars with AQE on, UCX on, Databricks Azure, Databricks AWS, Dataproc	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@NvTimLiu
	Run LHA tests on staging jars	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@NvTimLiu
	CDH testing(skip)	2024-12-17	2024-12-20	@NvTimLiu
	QA testing with Snapshot on YARN, NGC with Volta and Ampere	2024-12-09	2024-12-17	@johnzhong
	Run pre-processing workflow for DLRM sample use case(skip)	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@johnzhong
	QA testing with final packages on YARN, NGC with Volta and Ampere	2024-12-13	2024-12-17	@johnzhong
Release
	Tag the release and deploy the staging artifacts to maven central repository	2024-12-18	2024-12-18	@NvTimLiu
	Update gh-pages	2024-12-16	2024-12-18	@nvliyuan
	Test spark-rapids-examples repo with Spark-Rapids 24.10	2024-12-16	2024-12-18	@nvliyuan
	Update docs for current release in spark-rapids-examples	2024-12-16	2024-12-18	@nvliyuan
	Update tools notebooks on Databricks and EMR for current release in spark-rapids-examples	2024-12-16	2024-12-18	@nvliyuan
	Update spark-rapids.sh in https://github.com/GoogleCloudDataproc/initialization-actions/tree/master/spark-rapids for the plugin	2024-12-16	2024-12-18	@nvliyuan