Enhancement: Setup for Contributor-Friendly Open Source Workflow

[AKMaily]

To make this open-source project ready for external contributions, the following components are needed:

1. Contribution Workflow

Proposed Workflow:

1. Planning a change? ➡️ Create an Issue
2. On issue creation, maintainers are automatically notified
3. Discussion between maintainers and contributor
4. Agreement on a clear Definition of Done
5. A maintainer assigns a responsible contributor to the issue
6. Contributor opens a Pull Request (PR) referencing the issue
7. CI runs to validate the build and tests
8. Maintainers are automatically assigned as reviewers
9. The PR includes a relevant changelog entry
10. The PR is reviewed and approved
11. The PR is merged
12. On merge, CI triggers a new release with an updated version number

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2. A CONTRIBUTING.md Guide

Guide to explain:

• How to propose changes
• Contribution checklist

3. Issue & PR Templates

Templates for:

• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Pull Requests

4. CODEOWNERS File

Define maintainers per directory or file to:

• Automatically request reviews
• Clarify code responsibilities

5. CI for PR Checks

• Run tests
• Lint code
• Ensure formatting

6. CI for Release Version Updates

• Automatically bump semantic version based on PR labels or commit messages

7. CI for Publishing Releases

8. CHANGELOG.md

Maintain a clean and categorized changelog documenting referencing keepachangelog

• Added
• Changed
• Fixed
• Removed

9. Linter & Formatter

• Enforce consistent code style