Allowing us to do preview releases

[greglandrum]

Comment:

It would be really cool if we could make beta releases of the RDKit available using the conda-forge machinery.
It looks like it's possible to do preview releases by following these directions:
https://conda-forge.org/docs/maintainer/knowledge_base.html#pre-release-builds

For this we need an rc branch on this feedstock, but that's not something I can do.

I can get a branch configured on my side, so if one of the maintainers could create an rc branch I can setup the PR.

@mcs07 @jaimergp, do you have time to do this (or do you know a reasons we shouldn't do it?)

[jaimergp]

I can start a failing branch so it doesn't upload anything. Then in the PR you add the necessary changes to revert the forced failure and implement the prereleases. Does that sound ok?

[greglandrum]

Makes sense to me.

[jaimergp]

Totally forgot about this. pre branch now available. Make sure to restore the sha256 checksum!

[greglandrum]

Thanks, I will try to give this a try in the next couple of weeks, once we have something sensible available for people to try.

Note that the docs I link to above say that the branch should be either rc or dev. Does pre work too?

[jaimergp]

It doesn't have an effect, afaik. The standardization is way more important for the channel label. I can rename to rc if you prefer it, though!