We will support only the latest LTS JAVA supported by Apache Kafka.
Apache Kafka is already being built and tested with JAVA 21.
By release 3.7.0 (the next release), Apache Kafka will have JAVA 21 as one of the officially supported versions.
Hence, we will support JAVA 21 in our docker image.

For existing apache kafka users there will be no impact as JVM based docker image will be a new feature.

EOL Policy

We want to keep it inline with the Apache Kafka EOL Policy. We will support the last 3 releases(bug fix, CVE fixes etc).

Test Plan

Testing the functionality of the Apache Kafka packaged in the image
- The image will consist of the official tarball released by Apache Kafka.
- The above tarball is pre tested as the part of Apache Kafka release.
- Hence no extra testing is required for the Apache Kafka packaged in the image.
Testing the Docker Image - Integration of the Apache Kafka with the Docker
- Dockerizing Apache Kafka requires additional steps like, passing the configs from the user to the properties file in the container, passing credentials etc.
- Sanity tests will be added to test the proper functionality of the docker image.

...