Initial release: CI and packaging

[jameslamb]

Description

This project is targeting RAPIDS 26.04 for its first release. This issue tracks remaining work to get it into a minimally release-ready state.

Approach

repo setup

• create a v26.02.00a tag
• configure codeowners, branch protections, UI settings, etc. (get pre-commit passing, restrict PR CI to just pre-commit, other small fixes #15)
• initial README (Add README #55)
• update "About" section on repo homepage
• enable simple, working PR CI (e.g. just pre-commit) (get pre-commit passing, restrict PR CI to just pre-commit, other small fixes #15)
• enable building locally via build.sh + docs on how to run it
• look at git grep -i cuml, remove/update anything that shouldn't still be here (get pre-commit passing, restrict PR CI to just pre-commit, other small fixes #15)

PRs and development

• set up devcontainers
  • update rapidsai/devcontainers Add nvforest to manifest.yaml devcontainers#672
  • add devcontainers in this repo ([CI] Enable devcontainer jobs #82)
• get full PR CI working
  • pre-commit (get pre-commit passing, restrict PR CI to just pre-commit, other small fixes #15)
  • conda builds / tests ([CI] Enable conda-python-tests and bump scikit-learn to 1.5 #21)
  • devcontainers ([CI] Enable devcontainer jobs #82)
  • wheel builds / tests, including binary size checks and other wheel validation ([CI ] Enable wheel-tests-cuforest and fix treelite linking #23)
  • docs builds (Set up docs build #35)
  • other miscellaneous CI jobs as needed
• set up builds triggered by merges to main (enable branch builds on merge #56)
• ensure project is up to date with other RAPIDS-wide changes (update-version.sh: update usage docs, other small changes #81)

Productization

• enable nightly builds / tests at https://github.com/rapidsai/workflows (enable nvforest nightly builds and tests workflows#110)
• update rapids-metadata (add nvforest, 26.06 packages rapids-metadata#73)
• update release-scripts (https://github.com/rapidsai/release-scripts/pull/74)
• inform RAPIDS Ops of the new packages to be released (https://github.com/rapidsai/ops/issues/4600)
• publish docs via https://github.com/rapidsai/docs
• add nvforest to RAPIDS install selector (Add nvForest to the install selector docs#754)

Notes

I've omitted other private steps here like legal approvals, internal review, etc. because this issue will be public when the repo's made public. Those should be tracked elsewhere.

[jameslamb]

create a v26.02.00a tag

I just did this

git checkout a4ec7c9778d62b61e6068376944cc55ab00cf7a8
git tag v26.02.00a
git push upstream v26.02.00a

https://github.com/rapidsai/cuforest/releases/tag/v26.02.00a

[csadorf]

create a v26.02.00a tag

I just did this

git checkout a4ec7c9
git tag v26.02.00a
git push upstream v26.02.00a
https://github.com/rapidsai/cuforest/releases/tag/v26.02.00a

Should we delete this tag now that we are targeting 26.04 or does it not matter?