Define how conformance levels and release channels should be applied to GAMMA

[mikemorris]

What would you like to be added:

Define how conformance levels (core, extended, implementation-specific) and release channels (standard, experimental) should be applied to GAMMA.

Why this is needed:

It may be useful to somehow segment GAMMA support, as some N/S Gateway API implementations are very unlikely to implement mesh functionality.

[mikemorris]

There has been some discussion on this topic in the past few GAMMA meetings, and is on the agenda for further discussion at the next main Gateway API meeting on 1/23/2023.

Ideas include introducing a "conformance profile" or separate suite to segment GAMMA tests without introducing new channels or levels, as well as potentially split L4/L7 conformance given some N/S implementations may not support both.

There is interest in building machine-readable advertisement of feature support, possibly through GatewayClass, or potentially something more broadly applicable (from which other projects might benefit too) like a "capabilities" API.

[keithmattix]

Consensus was that conformance tests aren't required until promotion to beta, so we have time to decide. Gateway API is looking into creating a way to split off a GAMMA profile of separate conformance tests for mesh implementations

[keithmattix]

Does #1686 cover enough of this issue for the Implementable 0.70 milestone?

[mikemorris]

/assign