Align azure-ai-evaluation version/changelog to 1.16.8 and remove empty release sections

[Copilot]

Follow-up to PR #46998: changelog validation was still targeting 1.16.7 (from _version.py), which caused release-date ordering and empty-section checks to fail in Build Analyze. This update aligns package versioning with the new 1.16.8 (Unreleased) entry and removes only the empty headers that triggered validation errors.

• Version alignment

  • Bumped sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py:
    • VERSION = "1.16.7" → VERSION = "1.16.8"

• CHANGELOG cleanup (surgical)

  • In ## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07), removed empty ### Breaking Changes.
  • In ## 1.16.8 (Unreleased), removed empty:
    • ### Features Added
    • ### Bugs Fixed
    • ### Other Changes
  • Kept ### Breaking Changes under 1.16.8 with its existing bullet unchanged.

# sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py
VERSION = "1.16.8"

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Original prompt

Context

This is a follow-up fix to PR #46998 in Azure/azure-sdk-for-python. That PR moved a breaking-change CHANGELOG entry from the (already-released) 1.16.7 section into a new 1.16.8 (Unreleased) section in sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/CHANGELOG.md. The pipeline check python - pullrequest (Build Analyze) is now failing with these errors:

Invalid date [ 2026-05-07 ]. The date for the changelog being released must be the latest in the file.
The changelog entry has the following sections with no content (Breaking Changes). Please ensure to either remove the empty sections or add content to the section.
PowerShell exited with code '1'.

Root cause: the changelog-verification script reads the version from sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py (currently still 1.16.7) and then validates the matching ## 1.16.7 changelog entry. Because 1.16.7 is no longer the top-most/upcoming version (1.16.8 is), and because the now-empty ### Breaking Changes subsection remains under 1.16.7, both checks fail.

Required changes (work ON the existing branch copilot/update-changelog-to-1168; do NOT create a new branch)

1. sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py

Bump the version from 1.16.7 to 1.16.8 so it matches the new unreleased entry:

VERSION = "1.16.8"

Keep the existing copyright header and # represents upcoming version comment unchanged.

2. sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/CHANGELOG.md

Make these two surgical edits — do not touch any other content:

(a) Remove the empty ### Breaking Changes heading from the ## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07) section.

Currently the 1.16.7 section looks like this (abbreviated):

## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07)

### Features Added

- ...

### Breaking Changes

### Bugs Fixed

- ...

After: drop the empty ### Breaking Changes heading (and the blank line right after it) so the section becomes:

## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07)

### Features Added

- ...

### Bugs Fixed

- ...

(b) Remove the three empty subsections (### Features Added, ### Bugs Fixed, ### Other Changes) from the new ## 1.16.8 (Unreleased) section.

Currently the top of the file looks like this:

# Release History

## 1.16.8 (Unreleased)

### Features Added

### Breaking Changes

- Updated `EVALUATOR_NAME_METRICS_MAPPINGS` so `document_retrieval` and `rouge_score` report single primary metrics (`document_retrieval`, `rouge`), with previous sub-metrics now represented in each evaluator's `*_properties` payload.

### Bugs Fixed

### Other Changes

## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07)

After: keep only the ### Breaking Changes subsection (which is the only one with content), so it becomes:

# Release History

## 1.16.8 (Unreleased)

### Breaking Changes

- Updated `EVALUATOR_NAME_METRICS_MAPPINGS` so `document_retrieval` and `rouge_score` report single primary metrics (`document_retrieval`, `rouge`), with previous sub-metrics now represented in each evaluator's `*_properties` payload.

## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07)

Acceptance Criteria

• Changes are committed to the existing branch copilot/update-changelog-to-1168 (do NOT open a new PR; the existing PR Move azure-ai-evaluation breaking change note to 1.16.8 (Unreleased) #46998 will pick up the new commit).
• Only two files are modified: sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py and sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/CHANGELOG.md.
• _version.py now reads VERSION = "1.16.8".
• The ## 1.16.8 (Unreleased) section contains exactly one subsection: ### Breaking Changes, with the existing single bullet.
• The ## 1.16.7 (2026-05-07) section no longer contains an empty ### Breaking Changes heading.
• No other content in CHANGELOG.md is changed — all entries for 1.16.6 and earlier remain byte-for-byte identical.
• The python - pullrequest (Build Analyze) pipeline check passes.

References

• Existing PR: Move azure-ai-evaluation breaking change note to 1.16.8 (Unreleased) #46998
• Affected files:
  • sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/CHANGELOG.md
  • sdk/evaluation/azure-ai-evaluation/azure/ai/evaluation/_version.py

The following is the prior conversation context from the user's chat exploration (may be truncated):

User: The change log needed to be under version 1.16.8 instead version 1.16.7. SDK version 1.16.7 was already released on 5/7

Create a PR to fix it

Assistant: I'll create a PR to fix this by moving the changelog entry from 1.16.7 to a new 1.16.8 section.

Assistant: I'm waiting for your response to the confirmation dialog before I can dispatch the coding agent to create the PR that moves the CHANGELOG entry from 1.16.7 to a new 1.16.8 (Unreleased) section.

User: @copilot Accepted Confirmation: Confirm cloud agent session

Assistant: I've started a coding agent task to fix the CHANGELOG. It will move the EVALUATOR_NAME_METRICS_MAPPINGS breaking change entry out of 1.16.7 (already released on 2026-05-07) and into a new 1.16.8 (Unreleased) section in `sdk/evalua...

This pull request was created from Copilot chat.

[m7md7sien]

Undo VERSION = "1.16.8" update