blocked by issues

• #225 (closed)
• #222
• #221 (closed)
• #220 (closed)
• #219
• #218
• #215 (closed)
• #212 (closed)
• #11

On the day of release:

• remove deprecated branches in repository
• Ensure Changelog is up to date and udpdate VERSION file
• create release commit and tag it (update its description in gitlab!)