Kubernetes v1.32: mid-cycle update and important deadlines [Week 8]

[Frederico Muñoz]

Hello again, Kubernetes community,

...Here we landed to take in fresh water, and our crews got their mid-day meal
on the shore near the ships.

-- The Odyssey, Book IX

With week 8 coming to an end, we're slightly past the midpoint of this release,
a good opportunity to update the community on the progress of the v1.32 release
cycle.

_In short_: We have 60 enhancements going into Code Freeze, which is
approaching, and as such any enhancements that are likely to require an
exception should start working on them as soon as possible. We're still
gathering release highlights, so share your thoughts on the discussion thread.

Upcoming deadlines [0]:

- Code & Test freeze: Friday 8th November 2024
- Docs PRs ready for review: Tuesday 19th November 2024
- Release Highlights deadline: Tuesday 19th November 2024

* Enhancements

We are tracking 60 enhancements on the board [1], with 2 exceptions [2] filled,
one of which was accepted and the other removed [3]. As we prepare for Code
Freeze [4], all enhancements should be in a merge-ready state, including tests
and opened docs PRs: we ask enhancement owners to work on them to get them past
this important milestone; if an exception is likely to be required, *we highly
encourage that they are filled as soon as possible*: this allows us to grant
more time, and improve the chances of the exception being approved.

Code and Test freeze, which have been joined together in this release, is
Friday, 8th November 2024.

* Release highlights

The process of gathering release highlights continues, an important process that
will help define how this release will be announced. We kindly ask that all SIG
Leads and Technical Chairs join in the GitHub discussion [5] before the
deadline (Tuesday, 19th November).

* KubeCon NA and Release team meetings

We would like to thank everyone that has been involved in the release so far:
SIG Leads, Chairs, KEP authors, PRR reviewers, Docs reviewers, and all other
contributors that have helped us on our journey so far. As KubeCon NA approaches
[6], a word of appreciation to all that are going to participate in the
event. As discussed in the Release Team meetings, we will do an asynchronous
status update through Slack during that week, and the Release Team calendar
updates were already sent to reflect it.

More generally, the release has been progressing smoothly, alpha-3 was released
this week [7], and we are planning a sneak peek of the planned changes for
Kubernetes v1.32 next week -- so stay tuned!

All the best,

--
Frederico Muñoz

Kubernetes v1.32 Release Lead
on behalf of the Release Team

[0]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/release-1.32/README.md
[1]: https://bit.ly/k8s132-enhancements
[2]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/EXCEPTIONS.md
[3]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/release-1.32/exceptions.yaml
[4]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/blob/master/releases/release_phases.md#code-freeze
[5]: https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-release/discussions/2639
[6]: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america/
[7]: https://groups.google.com/a/kubernetes.io/g/dev/c/zx7bT-3B068/m/VooagDsUAAAJ