Prepare release 2.5.0

[cdcavell]

Summary

• bump shared assembly and template package version metadata to 2.5.0
• update NuGet package release notes for the minor release
• update README, package README, and template-packaging examples to 2.5.0
• update citation and Zenodo metadata with the August 2, 2026 release date
• update the hardened Kubernetes deployment example to the 2.5.0 container image
• include the manually prepared CHANGELOG.md entry for 2.5.0
• preserve the existing package ID, template identity, short name, and supported template options

Release focus

Release 2.5.0 captures the accumulated backward-compatible work since 2.4.0, including:

• explicit opt-in EF Core detailed errors and trace-bridge diagnostics with production-oriented defaults
• preserved standard EF Core Microsoft.Extensions.Logging behavior and sensitive-data logging boundaries
• hardened Kubernetes deployment defaults including non-root execution, seccomp, dropped capabilities, read-only root filesystem, resource limits, disabled service-account token mounting, and registry refresh behavior
• OpenTelemetry and SQLite runtime dependency updates
• refreshed GitHub Actions, CodeQL, OpenSSF Scorecard, Zizmor, and Docker authentication tooling

Validation

Repository CI should validate version consistency, package generation, build, tests, formatting, documentation, template smoke tests, security checks, and release workflow contracts before the draft is marked ready for review.