Close remaining release-process automation gaps

[kojiromike]

Problem

The three-PR release automation built in #664 covers the code/docs/infra slices of a release, but several post-merge steps from the historic wiki checklist were manual. Most have since been closed; the remaining work is tracked below.

The end-to-end runbook documenting each of these — and their automation status — is in docs/RELEASE_PROCESS.md § Automation gaps in openemr/openemr (added in openemr/openemr#12117).

Already closed

• Add ship-release workflow to merge the three release PRs in order #705 (ship-release workflow) — landed in feat(release): add ship-release workflow to merge three release PRs in order #712. Single workflow_dispatch merges the three PRs in strict order with mergeability gates; same workflow handles partial-merge recovery via skip-if-merged; refuses to act on docs-first.
• Add pre-release QA sign-off gate to the conductor PR merge #707 (pre-release QA gate) — closed as not-a-gap; the maintainers authorized to merge the conductor PR are the QA team, so the merge button is itself the QA gate.
• Automate SourceForge upload of release source archives #708 (SourceForge upload) — SourceForge is no longer supported. Release artifacts live on GitHub releases only; the website links to those release assets rather than re-hosting them.
• Automate DockerHub readme / repo-description update on release #709 — DockerHub readme / repo-description update on release. Completed.
• Automate demo-farm tag bump on release #710 — demo-farm tag bump on release. Completed.
• Seed production-demo rows for a new minor line at branch cut demo_farm_openemr#110 — Seed production-demo rows for a new minor line at branch cut. Completed by the auto-derive bot (feat(auto-derive): scaffold ip_map + demoLibrary derivation bot (dry-run) demo_farm_openemr#135 / Fix for updates to core alpine packages #138 / Fixing email detection #141). Bot derives ip_map_branch.txt from upstream release-targets.yml; new minor lines flow through naturally — no manual seeding required.
• Move OpenEMR Downloads / Release History off the wiki onto Hugo website-openemr#120 — Release History page moved off the wiki onto Hugo. Completed.
• Move OpenEMR Patches download page off the wiki onto Hugo website-openemr#119 — OpenEMR Patches download page move off the wiki onto Hugo. Closed as not-planned (patch pages will continue to live on the wiki for now).

Open sub-issues

#	Step	Issue
1	Announcement fan-out (forums/chat/social/email)	#711
2	Auto-merge website-openemr release-docs PR on openemr-tag	#761
3	Tag-existence guard before docs DRAFT→FINAL flip	openemr/website-openemr#132
4	Docs-first recovery reconciliation workflow	openemr/website-openemr#133

Items 3–4 are defects/follow-ons surfaced while hardening the end-to-end flow for the first automated release; they are tracked here as cross-repo sub-issues.

Goal

Close the remaining sub-issues. None are blocking the existing automation; each shrinks the maintainer's manual surface further. This umbrella stays open until all open sub-issues above are closed.

References

• Automate release documentation across openemr, website-openemr, openemr-devops #664 — three-PR release flow design
• feat(release): add ship-release workflow to merge three release PRs in order #712 — ship-release workflow implementation
• docs: add end-to-end RELEASE_PROCESS.md for automated release flow openemr#12117 — adds the end-to-end runbook
• openemr/openemr docs/RELEASE_PROCESS.md — the runbook itself

[kojiromike]

Sub-issue #2 (openemr/website-openemr#119, "Move OpenEMR Patches page off wiki") closed as not-a-gap: standalone patch releases will not survive the move to an automated regular release cadence — security and bug fixes will ship in the next tagged release instead, and the wiki page goes away (edited by hand to point at /downloads/). RELEASE_PROCESS.md updated in openemr/openemr#12117.

Remaining open sub-issues: #710 (demo-farm tag bump), #711 (announcement fan-out).