RELEASE.md

Release Process

Overview

The Gateway API project is an API project that has the following two components:

• Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
• Corresponding Go API in the form of sigs.k8s.io/gateway-api Go package

This repository is the home for both of the above components.

Versioning strategy

The versioning strategy for this project is covered in detail in the release documentation.

Releasing a new version

Writing a Changelog

To simplify release notes generation, we recommend using the Kubernetes release notes generator:

go install k8s.io/release/cmd/release-notes@latest
export GITHUB_TOKEN=your_token_here
release-notes --start-sha EXAMPLE_COMMIT --end-sha EXAMPLE_COMMIT --branch main --repo gateway-api --org kubernetes-sigs

This output will likely need to be reorganized and cleaned up a bit, but it provides a good starting point. Once you're satisfied with the changelog, create a PR. This must go through the regular PR review process and get merged into the main branch. Approval of the PR indicates community consensus for a new release.

Release Steps

The following steps must be done by one of the Gateway API maintainers:

For a major or minor release:

• Cut a release-major.minor branch that we can tag things in as needed.
• Check out the release-major.minor release branch locally.
• Update pkg/generator/main.go with the new semver tag and any updates to the API review URL.
• Run the following command BASE_REF=vmajor.minor.patch make generate which will update generated docs and webhook with the correct version info. Note that the YAMLs will not work until the tag is actually published in the next step.
• Publish a new Git tag. This can be done using the git CLI or Github's release page.
• Run the make build-install-yaml command which will generate install files in the release/ directory
• Attach these files to the Github release.
• Update the README.md as needed for any latest release references.

For an RC release:

• Update pkg/generator/main.go with the new semver tag and any updates to the API review URL.
• Run the following command BASE_REF=vmajor.minor.patch make generate which will update generated docs and webhook with the correct version info. Note that the YAMLs will not work until the tag is actually published in the next step.
• Include the changelog update in this PR.
• Merge the update PR.
• Tag the release using the commit on main where the changelog update merged. This can be done using the git CLI or Github's release page.
• Run the make build-install-yaml command which will generate install files in the release/ directory
• Attach these files to the Github release.