gRPC-Core Release 1.69.0

[Mark D. Roth]

This is 1.69.0 (gridiron) release announcement for gRPC-Core and the wrapped languages C++, C#, Objective-C, Python, PHP and Ruby. Latest release notes are here.

This release contains refinements, improvements, and bug fixes, with highlights listed below.

Core

• [Alarm] Fix Alarm reuse on cancellation. (#38114)
• [xDS RBAC] Support string_match in HeaderMatcher. (#38185)
• [pick_first] fix shutdown bug in new PF impl. (#38144)
• [c-ares] Fix inverted length check in GrpcPolledFdWindows. (#38101)
• [RetryFilter] Copy the SliceBuffer from RetryFilter's cache to batch payload. (#38069)
• [EventEngine] Add stronger wording on Endpoint::Read contract. (#38036)
• [chttp2] Fix channelz address. (#38022)
• [XdsClient] Add missing authority to XdsClient metrics scope. (#38009)
• [EventEngine] API contract: Endpoint::Read will provide either an error or data, but never both. (#38019)
• [Build] Dropped Bazel 6.x support. (#37979)

Python

• [Build] Override MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET for gRPC Python. (#37997)