Polish release procedure

[connorjbracy]

The release steps were not entirely clear to a new dev (but have since been documented in README.md) and could be fully automated by moving the steps for publishing new releases into a GitHub action. Doing so would provide the following benefits:

• Streamline the procedure to a minimal amount of actions needed to be done by group members
• Self-document the steps for releasing for easy debugging should a problem arise (e.g., a changed API breaking the steps) in the future
• Remove system-dependent requirements for certain steps of the release procedure as the steps would be carried out in a container that we know has the packages necessary to complete the process (i.e., this would resolve Issue #44)