roadmap.md

Roadmap and Vision

SIG Release Roadmap for 2024 and beyond

This document contains the SIG Release Roadmap for 2024 and beyond. More detailed information can be found on the corresponding project boards.

Primary Focus

Provide a more robust, fast and flexible release pipeline for Kubernetes.

1. Robust: The process of creating release metadata should be consistent across consecutive runs as well as resilient to infrastructure failures.
2. Fast: The creation time of Kubernetes releases should be minimized.
3. Flexible: Future enhancements to the process will be taken into consideration from the beginning on, for example when thinking about extending the release metadata.

Deliverables

The following deliverables are necessary to achieve the overall goal. Within the following listing, all deliverables are sorted by their priority and their state.

Work in progress (WIP)

1. Make artifact validation more robust

   Outcome: Provide a fast and error-resistant workflow for artifact promotion compliant with SLSA.

   Enhancement: was kubernetes/enhancements#3027

   Project board: https://github.com/orgs/kubernetes/projects/171

2. Making deb and rpm package builds more robust

   Outcome: Provide a fast and error-resistant workflow for building and publishing packages to the community-owned infrastructure.

   Enhancement: kubernetes/enhancements#1731

   Project board: https://github.com/orgs/kubernetes/projects/137

3. Enable other Kubernetes subprojects to use our packages infrastructure

   Outcome: Building a CLI, library and documentation for Kubernetes related projects to use the existing packaging infrastructure.

   Enhancement: none

   Project board: https://github.com/orgs/kubernetes/projects/137

4. Migrate away from GCS bucket: gs://kubernetes-release

   Outcome: Ensure we migrate away from gs://kubernetes-release, use a community-owned Object Storage bucket for binaries releases, serve the binaries published through a CDN service.

   Enhancement: none

To be done (TODO)

1. Modernize and Extend Release Metadata

   Outcome: Providing release metadata compliant to the latest industry standards.

   Enhancement: none (was kubernetes/enhancements#3027)

   Project board: https://github.com/orgs/kubernetes/projects/138

2. Make Kubernetes releases more flexible

   Outcome: Provide more possibilities for Kubernetes releases to be created in custom infrastructure environments.

   Enhancement: none

Known Risks

1. We rely on different SIGs for our work

   We have a need to discuss our enhancements with different SIGs to get all required information and drive the change. This can lead into helpful, but maybe not expected input and delay the deliverable.

2. Some topics require initial research

   We're not completely aware of all technical aspects for the changes. This means that there is a risk of delaying because of investing more time in pre-research.

Requests to Other Teams

1. SIG K8s Infra

   For general infrastructure support we rely on.

2. SIG Architecture

   For the formalization of the released platforms and input about the overall supply chain.

3. SIG Security

   For content which should be part of the release metadata.

Done Deliverables

1. Moving deb/rpm package builds to community infrastructure (Consumable)

   Outcome: Automated builds of signed deb and rpm Kubernetes packages within community infrastructure.

   Enhancement: kubernetes/enhancements#1731

   Project board: https://github.com/orgs/kubernetes/projects/137

2. Signing of release artifacts (Secure)

   Outcome: Being able to ship signed release artifacts, which includes container images in the first iteration as well as all artifacts following on.

   Enhancement: kubernetes/enhancements#3031

3. Formalize supported release platforms (Introspectable)

   kubernetes#1337

   Outcome: Definition of the life cycle for currently supported Kubernetes artifacts and a guideline for the community about how to add new platforms.

4. Implement a Bill of Materials (BOM) for release artifacts (Introspectable / Secure)

   kubernetes/release#1837

   Outcome: An automated formal verification of produced release artifacts for every future release.

5. Create releases landing page (Consumable)

   kubernetes/website#20293

   Outcome: A releases page that is up to date and acts as canonical place for release related information, for example links to release notes and support timelines.

6. Define and implement the release cadence survey (Introspectable)

   kubernetes#1526

   Outcome: A regular survey evaluating the user experience of the current release cadence.

7. Distribute the load of Kubernetes artifacts between vendors (Consumable)

   Outcome: A policy and procedure for use by SIG Release to promote container images and release binaries to multiple registries and mirrors.

   Enhancement: kubernetes/enhancements#3055

8. Simplify CVE process for release management (Secure)

   kubernetes#896, kubernetes/release#1354

   Outcome: A documented and simple process for handling CVE information within Kubernetes releases.

Stale

This section covers items from the past 2022 roadmap which have not been started or became stale.

1. Enhance Kubernetes binary artifact management (Consumable)

   kubernetes#1372

   Enhancement: none

   Outcome: Being able to promote files as artifacts and using this mechanism for Kubernetes releases.

2. Define and collect metrics about Kubernetes releases (Introspectable)

   kubernetes#1527

   Enhancement: none

   Outcome: Being able to measure and interpret a set of defined metrics about Kubernetes releases to associate actions with those.

3. Establish Cluster API as first-class signal for upstream releases (Consumable)

   Enhancement: none

   Outcome: Cluster API provides a CI signal for blocking release test jobs.

4. Enhance and simplify Kubernetes version markers (Consumable)

   Enhancement: none

   Outcome: Clear documentation about available version markers as well as their simplified automation.