Release 1.8.2405

[damyanp]

The proposed schedule for this release is:

• [x] 5/8/2024 - Create the release branch from main
• [x] 5/15/2024 - Release Candidate 1 (begin Ask Mode[^1] for release branch).
  • NOTE: main was merged into the release branch at this point (fd7e54b)
• [ ] 5/21/2024 - Final Release Candidate
• [ ] 5/23/2024 - Final Release Date

Tasks:

• [x] Create release branch from main
• [ ] Update README.md
• [ ] Create draft of Release post on GitHub
• [ ] Blog post ready (@llvm-beanz)
• [ ] Ensure #6376 is included
• [ ] Tag final release and post binaries.

Quality Sign-off

• [ ] Microsoft Testing Sign-off (@pow2clk)
• [ ] Google Testing Sign-off (@sudonatalie)

[^1]: Ask Mode is a Microsoft-ism to denote when changes require approval before accepting merges. For DXC this will require approval from @microsoft/hlsl-release