Tasks for v1.10 release cycle

[mboersma]

Please see the corresponding sections of the role-handbooks for documentation of individual tasks. See CAPI v1.10 release improvement tasks for additional tracking info.

Tasks

Week 1:

• [Release Lead] Finalize release schedule and team Friday, January 10
  • 📖 Update Cluster API release-1.10 release team members #11648
• [Release Lead] Add/remove release team members Friday, January 10
  • 📖 Update Cluster API release-1.10 release team members #11648
  • CAPI: Update with v1.10 release team members kubernetes/org#5335
  • CAPI: Update v1.10 release team members kubernetes/community#8241
• [Release Lead] Prepare main branch for development of the new release
  • 🌱 Prepare main branch for v1.10 development #11647
• [Communications Manager] Add docs to collect release notes for users and migration notes for provider implementers
• [Communications Manager] Update supported versions

Week 1 to 4:

• [Release Lead] [Track] Remove previously deprecated code
  • ⚠️ Remove deprecated flag for old infra machine naming #11679
    • Blocked by 🌱 Add NamingStrategy to MachineDeployment #11172

Week 3:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.9.4 & v1.8.9 releases Tuesday, January 21
  • CAPI v1.9.4
  • CAPI v1.8.9

Week 7:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.9.5 & v1.8.10 releases Tuesday, February 18
  • CAPI v1.9.5
  • CAPI v1.8.10
• [Release Lead] [Track] Bump dependencies
  • 🌱 Bump controller-gen to v0.17.2 #11866
  • 🌱 Bump kustomize to v5.6.0 #11867
  • 🌱 Bump go to v1.23.7 #11981

Week 11:

• [Release Lead] Create release-1.10 branch Tuesday, March 18
• [Release Lead] Update milestone applier and GitHub Actions Tuesday, March 18
• [CI Manager] Setup jobs and dashboards for the release-1.10 release branch Tuesday, March 18
  • 🌱 add jobs for CAPI release 1.10 kubernetes/test-infra#34536
• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.0-beta.0 release Tuesday, March 18
  • CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0
• [Release Lead] Create a new GitHub milestone for the next release
• [Communications Manager] Communicate beta to providers Tuesday, March 18
• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.9.6 & v1.8.11 releases Tuesday, March 18
  • CAPI v1.9.6
  • CAPI v1.8.11

Week 12:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.0-beta.1 release Tuesday, March 25
  • CAPI v1.10.0-beta.1
• [Release Lead] Set a tentative release date for the next minor release
• [Release Lead] Assemble next release team
• [Release Lead] Select release lead for the next release cycle

Week 13:

• Kubecon idle week April 1-4

Week 14:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.0-rc.0 release Tuesday, April 8
• [Communications Manager] Ensure the book for the new release is available Tuesday, April 8

Week 15:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.0-rc.1 release Tuesday, April 15

Week 16:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.0 release Tuesday, April 22
• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.9.7 & v1.8.12 releases Tuesday, April 22
• [Release Lead] Organize release retrospective
• [Communications Manager] Change production branch in Netlify to the new release branch
• [Communications Manager] Update clusterctl links in the quickstart

Week 17:

• [Release Lead] Cut the v1.10.1 release Tuesday, April 29

Continuously:

• [Release lead] Maintain the GitHub release milestone
• [Release lead] Bump the Go version
  • 🌱 Bump go to v1.23.5 #11714
  • [release-1.8] 🌱 Bump go to v1.22.11 #11738
  • [release-1.9] 🌱 Bump go to v1.22.11 #11739
  • 🌱 Bump go to v1.23.6 #11803
  • [release-1.9] 🌱 Bump go to v1.22.12 #11804
  • [release-1.8] 🌱 Bump go to v1.22.12 #11805
• [Communications Manager] Communicate key dates to the community
• [Communications Manager] Improve release process documentation
• [Communications Manager] Maintain and improve user facing documentation about releases, release policy and release calendar
• [CI Manager] Monitor CI signal
• [CI Manager] Reduce the amount of flaky tests

If and when necessary:

• [Release Lead] [Track] Bump the Cluster API apiVersion
• [Release Lead] [Track] Bump the Kubernetes version
• [Release Lead] Track Release and Improvement tasks

Extra task

This cycle we are creating the release branch & opening up main for the next release earlier than usual.
In order to do so we are anticipating some task, but in some cases some follow up is required:

• After CAPI v1.10 is released

  • Drop 1.7 jobs from test-infra
  • Fix clusterctl upgrade tests starting from 1.10 to use GetStableReleaseOfMinor instead of GetLatestReleaseOfMinor

• After K8s v1.33 is released

  • Fix clusterctl upgrade tests starting from 1.10 to use v1.33 as InitWithKubernetesVersion/WorkloadKubernetesVersion

/priority critical-urgent
/kind feature

[mboersma]

/assign

[mboersma]

@fabriziopandini @sbueringer this is updated with the changes to release-v1.10.md. Could someone take a quick look and triage this?

[sbueringer]

@mboersma

I moved "Setup jobs and dashboards for the release-1.10 release branch" to week 11.

Additionally I added a task in the same week to create the release branch. Usually our release GitHub action creates the branch automatically when the first RC tag is created. But in this case we have to create the branch earlier manually.

I hope we don't run into any additional problems because release tooling might assume that beta releases are cut against main instead on top of a release branch.

(cc @chrischdi I don't remember the exact problems we hit in that area in CAPV, but I think the problems in CAPV might be different because we run the release-notes tool not manually there)

But anyway, we're around. So we can help if we run into problems then

[mboersma]

Thanks @sbueringer! I'll investigate whether the tools may have a problem cutting a beta from the release branch.

[mboersma]

I'll investigate whether the tools may have a problem cutting a beta from the release branch.

See #11979.

[mbrow137]

Communicated beta release "v1.10.0-beta-0" to providers

List of issues created:

• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-addon-provider-helm#371
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-aws#5416
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-azure#5491
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-cloudstack#421
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-digitalocean#700
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-gcp#1447
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-kubemark#124
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-kubevirt#313
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-ibmcloud#2259
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing oracle/cluster-api-provider-oci#402
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-openstack#2489
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-operator#754
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-packet#792
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing tinkerbell/cluster-api-provider-tinkerbell#451
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing cluster-api-provider-vsphere#3407
• CAPI v1.10.0-beta.0 has been released and is ready for testing metal3-io/cluster-api-provider-metal3#2421

[sbueringer]

@mboersma I wrote up the highlights & deprecation and removal warnings sections for the release notes (as of beta.0 release). Also updated the beta.0 GitHub release accordingly.

## Highlights

- Bumped to controller-runtime v0.20, k8s.io/* v0.32, controller-gen v0.17
- Features:
  - ClusterResourceSet was promoted to GA (#11365)
  - PriorityQueue was added as an alpha feature (see kubernetes-sigs/controller-runtime#2374 for more details) (#11698)
- API: Added additional validation to our CRDs (#11834)
- API: Various improvements to v1beta2 conditions
- ClusterClass: Support referencing ClusterClasses across namespaces (#11352 #11395 #11649)
- ClusterClass: Add NamingStrategy for InfraCluster (#11898)
- Machine: Add MachineDrainRule behavior "WaitCompleted" (#11545)
- Machine: Add --additional-sync-machine-labels flag to allow syncing additional labels to Nodes (#11650)
- Machine: Sync Machine annotations to Nodes (#11813)
- MachineSet/MachineDeployment: Add NamingStrategy to MachineDeployment (#11172)
- MachineSet/KCP: Improve preflight checks (#11927 #11941 #11928)
- CRD migration: Add CRD migrator (#11889 #11991)
- Metrics: Add ClusterCache (#11789) and SSA cache (#11635) metrics
- Merged CAPIM in CAPD (see [From CAPD(docker) to CAPD(dev)](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api/blob/main/docs/proposals/20250124-From%20CAPD(docker)%20to%20CAPD(dev)%20.md) for more details)
- As usual, significantly improved e2e test framework & coverage (e.g. #11667 #11884 #11966 #9620 #11983)
- New providers in clusterctl:
  - Addon providers: fleet (#11806)
  - Infrastructure providers: OpenNebula (#11835), Harvester (#11477), Huawei Cloud (#11861)

## Deprecation and Removals Warning

- KCP/MachineSet: Removed deprecated flag for old infra machine naming (#11679)
- MD/MS/MP/KCP: Deprecated status replica counters planned for removal (#11516)
- MachineDeployment: Deprecated spec.progressDeadlineSeconds (#11472)
- CRD migration: Deprecated clusterctl upgrade CRD storage version migration for providers (#11889)
- ClusterResourceSet was promoted to GA, feature flag is now deprecated (#11741)

Please check with me, @fabriziopandini, @chrischdi for further updates for the next releases
(I'll be around until ~ 9th April, then on PTO)