Switch from version.txt to release-please for automated releases

[gauravgahlot]

Context

Currently, versioning is managed manually via version.txt, which both container build workflows use to tag images. This approach requires manual bumps and has resulted in no published GitHub releases so far.

As Akri components move to independent repositories, each repo should manage its own release lifecycle. release-please is the right tool for this — it automates version bumps, changelog generation, and GitHub release creation based on conventional commits.

Work involved

• Remove version.txt
• Add release-please workflow and config
• Update GitHub workflows to read version from the GitHub release tag instead of version.txt
• Adopt conventional commits going forward