Release data.table 1.17.0

[MichaelChirico]

We are nearing our planned 6-month cadence for a non-patch release.

Filing this issue to track progress and as a call to flag issues for inclusion in / exclusion from the milestone:

https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/34

Thanks for everyone's work :)

Let's aim for what can be coded up & reviewed by the end of January?

[MichaelChirico]

OK @TysonStanley I think we are basically ready for a release 🎉

Let's set a deadline on the translation updates of 1 week = February 6? We can also wait that long for R-core to get back to us about the non-API thing.

I am not sure if simply being assigned as reviewer generated a ping, so forgive the duplication if so: @Rdatatable/brazil @Rdatatable/french @Rdatatable/chinese @Rdatatable/spanish, see the .po update PRs.

cc also the language teams without existing .po files as of now: @Rdatatable/russian @Rdatatable/hindi, we can merge in the subset of completed translations for this release if you'd like to finish translations for 1.18.0. We can also consider making a translation-only patch release if needed.

Please reach out if there's any important considerations for the timeline here. Thank you all!

[TysonStanley]

That works, will get it live before the 20th deadline too.

[TysonStanley]

How are we feeling about meeting the Feb 20 deadline for the whole release? A TON has been done but looks like a few lingering ones. The only one remaining that seems particularly messy is the C API changes. I imagine since we are technically submitting a release in response to a fix on CRAN, they may allow us one more release without having the full C API fixed.

[MichaelChirico]

@TysonStanley yes, I think the investment required for the non-API stuff remains large. I suggest trying one more submission with the NOTES intact (especially, since a fix requires R 4.5.0 which is not yet officially released, or even scheduled).

I do want to fix up the last translation stuff, #6774 and #6776 have translation contributions that we should merge in, but it requires a bit of time I haven't found yet.