Merge branch 'protobuf-4.x-rc' into merge-main

Author: blakeli0

.release-please-manifest.json

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+{
+  ".": "3.18.0"
+}

release-please-config.json

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+{
+  "release-type": "java-yoshi",
+  "prerelease-type": "rc1",
+  "versioning": "prerelease",
+  "separate-pull-requests": false,
+  "include-component-in-tag": false,
+  "group-pull-request-title-pattern": "chore(${branch}): release ${version}",
+  "prerelease": true,
+  "packages": {
+    ".": {
+      "extra-files": []
+    }
+  }
+}