This excludes editing the proto file itself, or the auto-generated or hand-crafted fields that are derived from it.

Update README.md

This for release 7.7.4

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release v7.7.4

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

Metadata changes:
-- Drops the "-1" that was erroneously included in possible lengths before (didn't break anything, but was wrong) - it was a possibleLength of a sub-component so got added to the generalDesc possibleLengths
-- possibleNumberPattern no longer inherited: we don't use this anyway, we will do another CL soon to stop including it at all in the generated metadata
-- exampleNumber is no longer set on fixed-line and mobile elements from the generalDesc

XML file changes:
-- Stopped specifying "NA" and "-1" specifically for fixed-line and mobile blocks; now they are treated as every other type of phone number: if missing, don't fill them in from generalDesc, but leave them missing.

Code changes:
-- Stop using the exampleNumber on generalDesc for non-geo entities, but look at their phonenumber descs - the exampleNumber won't be stored on the generalDesc anymore. This affects porters if they either copied our build logic or used our built metadata in some way; they should update this method in their port too.

Attempted to clarify the wording around the 800 country code, which is distinct from the 800 area code, and was initially confusing (to me).

Add hash as a diallable char.

Using new possible length information to calculate whether a short
number is the right length or not. This made us realise that the data
was missing for MY; this was added.

Will do research before adding a new one.

* [maven-release-plugin] prepare release libphonenumber-7.7.2

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

from the start of a phone number.

Relevant for the many issues lately complaining about this behaviour for German numbers (country code 49) e.g. #1335 and #1067, etc

* Porting code to use the new possible length information for calculating
whether a phone number is possible, too short etc.

Changing PhoneNumberUtil to use the possibleLengths information, not the reg-exes.

Note the API is not changing, but the metadata is now somewhat stricter for
many countries, since before we applied only a minimum and maximum length for
most countries, and now we specify exactly which lengths are possible.

This has a flow-on effect when parsing, since we decide whether to do certain
operations like strip a national prefix based on whether the number is a
possible length before/after - when parsing, if the number is shorter than the *national* pattern, we no longer strip the national prefix.

Affected countries:
AD (7 digits now invalid)
AM (7 digits now invalid)
AR (9 digits now invalid)
AZ (8 digits now invalid)
BG (4 digits now valid for local-only numbers)
BJ (5-7 digits now invalid)
CC/CX (5 digit numbers now possible: this should always have been the case, but the generalDesc was wrong and didn't reflect its child elements. We now calculate it based on them, which allows 5 digit numbers.)
CO (9 digits now invalid)
CR (9 digits now invalid)
ET (8 digits now invalid)
GE (7 and 8 digits now invalid)
GH (8 digits now invalid)
IL (5 and 6 digits now invalid)
IM/JE/GG (7, 8 and 9 digits now invalid, shortest national number length now 10, so parsing affected for numbers shorter than this)
IS (8 digits now invalid)
KG (7,8 digits now invalid)
KR (11 digits now invalid)
LA (7 digits now invalid)
LI (8 digits now invalid)
LY (8 digits now invalid)
MV (8 and 9 digits now invalid)
MW (8 digits now invalid)
MX (9 digits now invalid)
NP (9 digits now invalid)
SE (11 digits now invalid)
SG (9 digits now invalid)
SL (7 digits now invalid)
SM (7-9 digits now invalid)
UA (8 digits now invalid)
UG (8 digits now invalid)
UZ (8 digits now invalid)