Merge pull request #505 from bedroge/pilot_page

Add short page about pilot repository

Author: boegel

docs/repositories/pilot.md

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+## EESSI pilot repository (`pilot.eessi-hpc.org`)
+
+Several pilot versions have been made available in the `/cvmfs/pilot.eessi-hpc.org` repository from 2020 until 2023.
+These versions were used to set up to gain experience with all the different components, set up the entire (automated) build workflow and infrastructure, find bugs and issues,
+and work towards a stable production-ready version of EESSI.
+
+
+When the 2023.06 version of EESSI was released (mid 2023) in the [production repository `/cvmfs/software.eessi.io`](software.eessi.io.md), the pilot versions became unsupported.
+In 2024 the initialization scripts of the pilot versions were modified to print deprecation messages, and they would try to automatically redirect users to the production repository.
+In May 2025, a removal announcement was added to the deprecation message.
+Finally, on 1 July 2025, the repository was removed, and the servers hosting the pilot repository were shut down.
+This means that you are no longer able to access (the software stacks in) the pilot repository.
+

mkdocs.yml

@@ -100,6 +100,7 @@ plugins:
         contributing_sw/opening_pr.md: adding_software/opening_pr.md
         contributing_sw/overview.md: adding_software/overview.md
         software_layer/adding_software.md: adding_software/overview.md
+        pilot.md: repositories/pilot.md # https://www.eessi.io/docs/pilot is mentioned in the EESSI open access paper
         gpu.md: site_specific_config/gpu.md
         rocm.md: site_specific_config/rocm.md
   # Enable our custom plugin for json-ld metadata