🥕 1.26 mid-cycle update - State of the Release 🥕

[Grace Nguyen]

Hello Kubernetes community,

TL;DR: 52 enhancements post-Enhancements Freeze. Please opt-in your docs and blog PRs by the deadlines below. We are also seeking Major Themes suggestions <3

We have been in release 1.26 for a few weeks and would like to give an update just before Kubecon. It’s been a few weeks since the Enhancements Freeze, and we are 6 weeks away from the 1.26 release. 

Upcoming important dates (schedule):

1. Feature Blog Freeze - Wednesday, November 2nd

2. Code Freeze - Wednesday, November 9th

3. Open placeholder PRs for docs - Thursday, November 10th

4. Test Freeze - Wednesday, November 16th

5. Docs PRs Ready for Review - Tuesday, November 15th

 

Enhancements

This release is our first to track enhancements, docs and more using the Github project board.

We are now tracking 52 enhancements post-Enhancements Freeze, with 4 exceptions filed, three of which were accepted and one of which was rejected. 

 

Feature Blogs

Feature blog is a great way to highlight and further communicate your enhancement, its technical depth and impact, to the community. This is especially encouraged for high visibility changes as well as deprecations and removals. To opt-in, request your SIG Lead to add the placeholder PR to the corresponding row on Comms team’s Github board view by Wednesday, November 2nd.

 

Documentations

Unless the KEP changes do not require any updates to the website, please open a PR against the `dev-1.26` branch on `kubernetes/website` by Thursday, November 10th. Instructions to create a placeholder PR are here. 

 

Major Themes

Each release, we choose high impact features to be major themes. You can nominate an enhancement to be a major theme by adding a comment link appropriate links to the feature to the discussion on Github. We kindly request that all SIG Leads and Technical Chairs participate in this collection. Last day for entry is Tuesday, November 15th.

Lastly, we thank the SIG leads, KEP authors, PRR reviewers and other contributors for their continuous commitment! With Kubecon NA happening next week, I would like to point out that SIG-release will have a Planning and Collaboration Session in the Contributor Summit. Members of the Release Team will also host a reflection on the project board migration. All Contributor Summit attendees are welcome!

For any questions or feedback, please reach out to us on #sig-release.

Warmly,

Grace Nguyen, on behalf of the 1.26 Release Team.