CNG: Allow Container Registry Maintainers to Merge Container Registry Version Bumps
Context
Container Registry maintainers are responsible for releasing new versions of the container registry across a number of distribution paths. Each of these paths depends on a new CNG image being built for the registry. These CNG MRs are created via automation on the registry project targeting the gitlab-org/build/CNG project and produce an MR like the following: Update gitlab-org/container-registry from v3.79... (gitlab-org/build/CNG!1486 - merged)
Proposal
The package team would like to decrease the time it takes us from cutting a new version of the registry project to deploying on the pre and staging environments. We anticipate that quicker iterations here will allow us to release versions to our production environments more often. As a result, each registry version will have fewer changes, which will help reduce the mean time to resolution in the case of future registry incidents.
CNG version bumps are the only intermediate step between a registry release being cut and that release being deployed on pre and staging, which is why we're chosen to focus on this part of our release process in particular. Enabling container registry maintainers to merge CNG version bump MRs for registry should also reduce the workload of the delivery team.