Changelog 2.6.0 rc.0 (#3982)

* changelog

Signed-off-by: Joe Elliott <number101010@gmail.com>

* some releases.md cleanup

Signed-off-by: Joe Elliott <number101010@gmail.com>

---------

Signed-off-by: Joe Elliott <number101010@gmail.com>

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -1,13 +1,14 @@
 ## main / unreleased
 
+# v2.6.0-rc.0
+
 * [CHANGE] **BREAKING CHANGE** Remove `autocomplete_filtering_enabled` feature flag [#3729](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3729) (@mapno)
 * [CHANGE] Bump opentelemetry-collector to 0.102.1 [#3784](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3784) (@debasishbsws)
 * [CHANGE] Bump Jaeger query docker image to 1.57.0 [#3652](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/issues/3652) (@iblancasa)
 * [CHANGE] Update Go to 1.22.4 [#3757](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3757) [#3793](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3793) (@joe-elliott, @mapno)
 * [CHANGE] Make vParquet4 the default block encoding [#3810](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3810) (@ie-pham)
 * [CHANGE] Azure v2 backend becomes the only and primary Azure backend [#3875](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3875) (@zalegrala)
   **BREAKING CHANGE** The `use_v2_sdk` configuration option has been removed.
-* [CHANGE] BlockMeta improvements to reduce the size [#3950](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3950) [#3951](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3951) [#3952](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3952)(@zalegrala)
 * [FEATURE] TraceQL support for link scope and link:traceID and link:spanID [#3741](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3741) (@stoewer)
 * [FEATURE] TraceQL support for link attribute querying [#3814](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3814) (@ie-pham)
 * [FEATURE] TraceQL support for event scope and event:name intrinsic [#3708](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3708) (@stoewer)
@@ -53,6 +54,7 @@
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Implement polling tenants concurrently [#3647](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3647) (@zalegrala)
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Added new middleware to block matching urls [#3963](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3963) (@javiermolinar)
 * [ENHANCEMENT] Reduce allocs of caching middleware [#3976](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3976) (@joe-elliott)
+* [ENHANCEMENT] BlockMeta improvements to reduce the size [#3950](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3950) [#3951](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3951) [#3952](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3952)(@zalegrala)
 * [BUGFIX] Fix panic in certain metrics queries using `rate()` with `by` [#3847](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3847) (@stoewer)
 * [BUGFIX] Fix double appending the primary iterator on second pass with event iterator [#3903](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3903) (@ie-pham)
 * [BUGFIX] Fix metrics queries when grouping by attributes that may not exist [#3734](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3734) (@mdisibio)
@@ -72,7 +74,6 @@
 * [BUGFIX] Fix race condition where a streaming response could be marshalled while being modified in the combiner resulting in a panic. [#3961](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3961) (@joe-elliott)
 * [BUGFIX] Pass search options to the backend for SearchTagValuesBlocksV2 requests [#3971](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3971) (@javiermolinar)
 
-
 ## v2.5.0
 
 * [CHANGE] Align metrics query time ranges to the step parameter [#3490](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/pull/3490) (@mdisibio)

RELEASES.MD

@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 # Release Candidates
 
-- Push a semver tag to main.  Something like:
+- Create a branch named `changelog-<version>-<rc.#>`. Clean up the changelog, add the version heading
+  and merge to main. 
+- Push a semver tag to main on the merge commit above.  Something like:
   - `git tag -a v1.2.0-rc.0`
   - `git push origin v1.2.0-rc.0`
 - This will initiate the build process in Github Actions and Drone.  The tagged docker image should
@@ -16,7 +18,7 @@
 
 This document details release procedures for Tempo.
 
-- Create a release branch. This will likely be on the same commit as the release candidate above.
+- Create a release branch. This may or may not be on the same commit as the release candidate above.
   - Name the branch like `release-v2.2`
 - Follow all steps in [Release Candidates](#release-candidates) except:
   - Drop the `-rc.#` postfix from the tag. For instance use `v1.2.0` instead. Something like: