[1.23] Release Updates / State of the Release

[Rey Lejano]

Hi Kubernetes community,

We are now past the Enhancements Freeze milestone of the release. The team is tracking 57 enhancements with 2 exception requests filed already. Any enhancements that wish to join the release now must have an approved exception. We thank all the SIG Chairs and Technical Leads for their support with the enhancements collection process.

Up ahead, we have some important milestones:

1. Feature Blog Freeze - Tuesday, November 2nd

2. Code Freeze - Tuesday, November 16th

3. Deadline to open placeholder PRs for docs - Thursday, November 18th

4. Docs PRs are Ready for Review - Tuesday, November 23rd

5. Test Freeze - Tuesday, November 23rd

A few important announcements and updates, as follows:

Feature Blog opt-in

You can opt-in to write a feature blog about your enhancement(s) by entering it in the feature blog tracking sheet. Feature blogs are a great way to showcase your enhancement(s) to a broader audience while providing details about what has changed technically. When done right, they also are great elevator pitches to attract newer contributors to our project and join in on the fun! If you wish to opt-in, please ensure you do so by making an entry in this sheet before the Feature Blog Freeze kicks in on Tuesday, November 2nd.

Note: This sheet is editable only by the SIG Chairs and Technical leads. If you don't have edit access to add an entry or have any questions, please reach out to the #release-comms or #sig-release channel.

Documentation for your Enhancements

If your enhancement requires new docs or updates to existing docs, then create a doc PR against the dev-1.23 branch in the k/website repo. A placeholder PR is required by Thursday, November 18th. Instructions to create a placeholder PR are here. With KubeCon NA and various holidays approaching, we ask enhancement owners to start early on documentation changes.

Major Themes for the Release

Every release cycle, the release team collects a list of the major themes that are published at various locations, one of them being the CHANGELOG / Release Notes. The Release Notes team has started a discussion thread on GitHub to collect all the major themes to make the process easier for the community. We request all the SIG Chairs and Technical Leads to participate in the discussion. Add a comment on what feature you would like to be highlighted from your respective SIG and links to the KEP / k/k / docs placeholder/feature gates for us to find out if the feature has eventually made it to the release. The deadline to submit an entry is Tuesday, November 23rd, the same day that the release notes team will start the final draft.

Release Retrospectives

Historically, the release team holds release retrospectives after the release. In a GitHub discussion, contributors discussed benefits of having a retrospective mid-cycle. For 1.23, the first retrospective is scheduled for Wednesday, November 3rd in week 11 of the release cycle. The second and third (if necessary) retrospectives are scheduled for December 15th and 16th, a week following the scheduled release date.

If you have any questions, please reach out to us in #sig-release. Thank you!

Regards,

Rey Lejano, 1.23 Release Lead 

(on behalf of the Kubernetes 1.23 Release Team)