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Release Dates

KIP Freeze: May 20, 2020 (a KIP must be accepted by this date in order to be considered for this release)
Feature Freeze: May 27, 2020 (major features merged & working on stabilization, minor features have PR, release branch cut; anything not in this state will be automatically moved to the next release in JIRA)
Code Freeze: June 10, 2020
Release: June 24, 2020 (Actual release: August 3, 2020)

These dates are goals and subject to change, but we expect to stay on the Time Based Release Plan unless unexpected critical issues come up. While the target release date is fixed at ~2w after code freeze, RCs will roll out as needed until the release vote passes.

The release manager is Randall Hauch.

Planned KIPs

KIP	JIRA	Component
KIP-131 - Add access to OffsetStorageReader from SourceConnector		Connect
KIP-158: Kafka Connect should allow source connectors to set topic-specific settings for new topics		Connect
KIP-221: Enhance DSL with Connecting Topic Creation and Repartition Hint		Streams
KIP-401: TransformerSupplier/ProcessorSupplier StateStore connecting		Streams
KIP-437: Custom replacement for MaskField SMT		Connect
KIP-441: Smooth Scaling Out for Kafka Streams (additional parts in 2.6)		Streams
KIP-444: Augment metrics for Kafka Streams (additional parts in 2.6)		Streams
KIP-446: Add changelog topic configuration to KTable suppress		Streams
KIP-447: Producer scalability for exactly once semantics (remainder in 2.6)		Streams
KIP-518: Allow listing consumer groups per state		Core/Clients
KIP-519: Make SSL context/engine configuration extensible		Core/Clients
KIP-546: Add Client Quota APIs to the Admin Client (remainder in 2.6)		Core/Clients
KIP-551: Expose disk read and write metrics		Core
KIP-557: Add emit on change support for Kafka Streams (partially complete in 2.6)		Streams
KIP-568: Explicit rebalance triggering on the Consumer		Core/Clients
KIP-569: DescribeConfigsResponse - Update the schema to include additional metadata information of the field		Core/Clients
KIP-570: Add leader epoch in StopReplicaRequest		Core
KIP-571: Add option to force remove members in StreamsResetter		Streams
KIP-573: Enable TLSv1.3 by default		Core/Clients
KIP-574: CLI Dynamic Configuration with file input		Core
KIP 577: Allow HTTP Response Headers to be Configured for Kafka Connect		Connect
KIP-585: Filter and Conditional SMTs		Connect
KIP-586: Deprecate commit records without record metadata		Connect
KIP-594: Expose output topic names from TopologyTestDriver		Streams
KIP-602: Change default value for client.dns.lookup		Core/Clients
KIP-604: Remove ZooKeeper Flags from the Administrative Tools (partially complete in 2.6)		Clients
KIP-605: Expand Connect Worker Internal Topic Settings		Connect
KIP-606: Add Metadata Context to MetricsReporter		Core/Connect/Streams
KIP-610: Error Reporting in Sink Connectors		Connect
KIP-613: Add end-to-end latency metrics to Streams (partially complete in 2.6)		Streams

Postponed KIPs

KIP	JIRA	Component
KIP-81: Bound Fetch memory usage in the consumer		Clients
KIP-280: Enhanced log compaction		Core
KIP-359: Verify leader epoch in produce requests		Core
KIP-466: Add support for List<T> serialization and deserialization		Streams/Clients
KIP-497: Add inter-broker API to alter ISR		Core
KIP-557: Add emit on change support for Kafka Streams (remainder)		Streams
KIP-580: Exponential Backoff for Kafka Clients		Core/Clients
KIP-584: Versioning scheme for features		Core/Clients
KIP-588: Allow producers to recover gracefully from transaction timeouts		Core/Clients
KIP-604: Remove ZooKeeper Flags from the Administrative Tools (remainder)		Clients
KIP-608 - Expose Kafka Metrics in Authorizer		Core
KIP-611: Improved Handling of Abandoned Connectors and Tasks		Connect
KIP-612: Ability to Limit Connection Creation Rate on Brokers		Core
KIP-613: Add end-to-end latency metrics to Streams (remainder)		Streams

How to Contribute

Before code freeze:

Participate in votes and discussions to land or postpone the open KIPs.
Review patches. We anticipate that this release will be bottlenecked mostly on reviews. The more reviewers, the more content we can fit in.
Write unit/integration/system tests. We want to preserve the tradition of high-quality releases in Apache Kafka.

After code freeze:

Write more unit/integration/system tests. We want to preserve the tradition of high-quality releases in Apache Kafka.
Improve documentation
Test the release candidates
Open blocker JIRAs on critical issues found. Open non-blocker JIRAs on any other issues found.
Fix critical bugs
Review bug fixes
Vote on RCs. Even though only PMC votes are binding, community votes are super important as we evaluate the readiness of the release