State of the Kubernetes 1.21 Release - March Edition!

[Nabarun Pal]

Hi everyone,

We are back again with the March edition of the State of the Kubernetes 1.21 Release.

This week we passed the Code Freeze milestone of this release cycle. The team is tracking 49 enhancements with 8 exception requests filed already as of this email. Thank you all for your efforts in getting the opted-in features implemented before the Code Freeze.

Up ahead, we have some important milestones:

1. Open placeholder PRs for docs -  Tuesday, March 16
2. Docs PRs Ready for Review - Wednesday, March 24
3. Test Freeze - Wednesday, March 24
4. End of collection for Release Major Theme - Thursday, March 25
5. Docs PRs reviewed and Ready to Merge - Wednesday, March 31
6. Feature Blogs Ready for Review - Wednesday, March 31
7. Release Day - Thursday, April 8

Note: The above deadlines/milestones come into effect End of Day Pacific Time. You can see the complete schedule here.

Now moving over to some important announcements:

Documentation Deadlines for Enhancements

If your enhancement requires new docs or updates to existing docs, then create the doc PR against the dev-1.21 branch in the k/website repo. A placeholder PR is required by Tuesday, March 16. Instructions to create a placeholder PR are here. It is very important to create placeholder PRs ahead in time, as this helps us to estimate the documentation reviewer capacity that would be needed prior to the Ready to Merge deadline. 

Further, the docs PRs that you create should be in a reviewable state by Wednesday, March 24. This will help you in having an ample amount of time before the Docs PRs Ready to Merge deadline on Wednesday, March 31 to cater to feedback from documentation reviewers.

Test Freeze

After Test Freeze comes into effect on End of Day, Wednesday, March 24, no tests may be changed or promoted to Conformance. If you are planning to change any of your tests or promote to Conformance, please ensure that you do so by the deadline.

Major Themes for the Release

Every release cycle, the release team collects a list of major themes that are published at various locations, one of them being the CHANGELOG / Release Notes. The Release Notes have started a discussion thread on GitHub to collect all the major themes to make the process easier for the community.

I want to request all SIG Chairs and Technical Leads to discuss and mention in the GitHub discussion linked above what you would like to be highlighted from your respective SIG. Now that we are in the Code Freeze and the list enhancements have been finalized pending exception requests, this is the right time to discuss and come up with the major themes that you would like to be highlighted in the Kubernetes v1.21 Release Notes.  The deadline to submit an entry is Thursday, March 25, the same day that the release notes team will start the final draft.

In case you have any questions/comments/concerns, please feel free to reply to this email or reach to me or any member of the 1.21 Release Team on #sig-release of Kubernetes Slack.

Best,

Nabarun Pal // Kubernetes 1.21 Release Lead

[Aaron Crickenberger]

Just to clarify on Test Freeze, the language in the docs is:

“Before this date, it is acceptable to improve test coverage of existing code. After this date, the goal is to fix, revert, or remove tests that are failing.”

My interpretation is changes that fix tests, revert previous changes that broke tests, or remove broken tests are acceptable after Test Freeze. But please check with the release team anyway, especially if you’re not sure 

Blame all typos on my iPhone

On Mar 12, 2021, at 12:51 PM, Nabarun Pal <pal.na...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Nabarun Pal]

On Sat, Mar 13, 2021 at 6:08 AM Aaron Crickenberger <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just to clarify on Test Freeze, the language in the docs is:

“Before this date, it is acceptable to improve test coverage of existing code. After this date, the goal is to fix, revert, or remove tests that are failing.”

My interpretation is changes that fix tests, revert previous changes that broke tests, or remove broken tests are acceptable after Test Freeze. But please check with the release team anyway, especially if you’re not sure

Thank you, Aaron, for the note.

The release team also goes by the same interpretation. Sorry if there was an information loss in my previous email or if it was conveying something otherwise.

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Best,

Nabarun Pal (pronoun.is/he)

Q: How can I use more inclusive language? A: https://heyguys.cc