Context

This issue tracks all the work for the v22.0.0 release, including RCs, code freeze, and GA. The version 2.15.0 of the vitess-operator will be released at the same time.

• Release Lead: @frouioui
• Mentor: @rohit-nayak-ps
• Shadower: @GuptaManan100

Key Dates (PDT)

Documentation and References

• Release Notes Summary
• Release Automation Tools
• Release Documentation
• Step-by-step Manual Release Documentation

Task Breakdown

1. Pre-Code Freeze

• Schedule Calendar Events: Set all meetings with the release team.
• CLI Documentation: Re-generate and review for accuracy.
  • Update CLI documentation for v20, v21 and v22 website#1961
• Deprecation Cleanup: Remove old deprecated flags and metrics.
  • Remove deprecated items before v22.0.0 #17894
• Release Notes Review: Update and verify the release notes summary.
• Vitess-Operator Release Notes: Write the release notes for the vitess-operator.
• Team Permissions: Ensure all team members have the correct permissions.
• Tooling Update: Update the vitess-releaser with recent bug reports and feature requests.

2. Code Freeze

• Code Freeze: Ensure the new release-22.0 branch is frozen and main is bumped to v23.0.0-SNAPSHOT.

3. Pre-RC-1 Release

• Draft Blog Post: Start drafting the release announcement blog post.
• X-Post of the Blog Post: Notify organizations that usually x-post our announcement blog post.
• CLI Documentation: Ensure the documentation is still up-to-date, re-generate if needed.
• Release Notes Review: Re-verify the release notes summary.
• Porting bug fixes: Keep a close eye on bug fixes and decide if they must be backported to release-22.0.

4. RC-1 Release

• RC-1: Release v22.0.0-RC1 and vitess-operator v2.15.0-RC1.

5. Post-GA

• Bug fixes: Keep a close eye to bug fixes merged on main and decide if they are worth a backport and an RC-2.
• RC-2: If bug fixes are merged on release-22.0, start planning for a RC-2 release and repeat the tasks from step 3 and 4.
• Final Blog Post: Finish the announcement blog post and notify organizations that cross-post it.
• Release Notes Final Review: Make sure one last time that the release notes and changelog look correct.
• CLI Documentation: Re-generate the documentation if needed, depending on recent merges to release-22.0.

6. GA

• GA: Publish v22.0.0 and v2.15.0.
• Announcements: Release the blog post and announce the new release on Slack and Twitter.