* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.50

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

* Removing old generated files when building new ones

* Removing old generated files when building new ones

* Removing old generated files when building new ones

Co-authored-by: penmetsaa <penmetsaa@google.com>

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.49

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

* Metadata updates for release 8.12.49
* Update Release Notes refarding new metadata resources

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.48

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

* M2M documentation update after NL M2M range support in mobile category

* Update FAQ.md

* removing duplicate target links

* Adding dependencies at the right level

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.47

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

This reverts commit 299e3c53da.

* Revert "Metadata updates for release 8.12.47 (#2754)"

This reverts commit 299e3c53da.

* Fix carrier and geocoding data file paths

It is used in the library with #2734, and not linking with it
breaks users of the library: https://bugs.debian.org/1008817

Co-authored-by: penmetsaa <penmetsaa@google.com>

* Added new classes with behavior from MetadataManager & MetadataSource

* Replaced MetadataManager usages with new classes

* New PrefixDataIOHandler which packs data into a jar

* Added mockito-core jar to lib folder

* Added mockito-all jar to lib folder and updated tests to not use junit4 annotations

* Fixed prefix generation entry points

* Specific exception for missing metadata cases

* Small change in checking missing metadata cases

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.46

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

This very minor, trivial and risk free commit fix introduced in 8.12.45 with #2734
error: ignoring return value of function declared with 'warn_unused_result' attribute [-Werror,-Wunused-result]"
Without this fix, I cannot build using clang++13

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.45

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

- Faced link errors stemmed from mismatch of api definitions of absl::node_hash_set. So explicitly mentioned this lib as dependency during linking. This is common case/solution for absl hash set lib's link errors as per community.
- Decided to continued to have wrapper (stringutil), so that in future it's easy if we decided to change implementation; client code is safe. Changed most of the implementations & data structures in stringutil, to use abseil stuffs more.
- Though absl::string_view is suitable for most cases where we want immutable/read-only string structures, limiting to stringutil apis, not changing public API signatures (even though no compliance issue); reason: reduce dependency on abseil libs.
- Abseil specific changes done:
    - std::set => absl::node_hash_set
    - std::map => absl::node_hash_map
    - Using absl alternatives for “SplitStringUsing” API and “StringHolder” class impl.
    - Replaced manual impl of prefix and suffix checks with absl::StartsWith() and absl::EndsWith.
    - Similarly used absl::StrReplaceAll, absl::StrCat, absl::StrAppend where possible; and for type conversion apis.
- Note: Tried applying parameter packs to replace manually written duplicate ```StrCat``` apis (for accommodating more number of parameters of same type), but it did not go well when different type arguments passed. Eg char, int types to be converted to StringHolder; faced constructor implicit conversion issues.

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.44

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration

* Accelerate conversion from integer to string, using abseil StrCat and StrAppend function

* minor code simplification

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v8.12.43

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration