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Release Dates

(all are in 2023)

KIP Freeze: 22nd November (Wednesday)
- A KIP must be accepted by this date in order to be considered for this release. Note, any KIP that may not be implemented in a week, or that might destabilize the release, should be deferred.
Feature Freeze: 6th December (Wednesday)
- major features merged & working on stabilisation, minor features have PR, release branch cut; anything not in this state will be automatically moved to the next release in JIRA
Code Freeze: 20th December (Wednesday)
At least two weeks of stabilization will follow Code Freeze, meaning we expect to release no earlier than January 3rd. We will move as fast as we can, and aim completion the earliest we can in January.

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 earliest possible release date is 2w after code freeze, release candidates (RCs) will roll out as needed until the release vote passes.

The release manager is Stanislav Kozlovski

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, as it usually happens, 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 release candidates. Even though only PMC votes are binding, community votes are super important as we evaluate the readiness of the release.

Open Issues

Also, feel free to refer to the 3.7.0 release page for more details of the included tickets (requires logging in to the Apache Kafka Jira project).

Planned KIP Content

Note: The planned content is not binding - the final content will be based on the features committed by the branch-cutting date.

See Kafka Improvement Proposals for the full list of KIPs.

If you do not see your KIP here and want to, please reply to the mailing list thread about the release!

KIP	Component	Status
KIP-405: Kafka Tiered Storage	core	A major part went out with 3.6.0. A minor part of the KIP is to be completed in 3.7.0.
KIP-580: Exponential Backoff for Kafka Clients	clients	Done
KIP-714: Client metrics and observability	core	Done A few minor improvements in the next release.
KIP-848: The Next Generation of the Consumer Rebalance Protocol	core	KIP Accepted Targetting a Preview in 3.7
KIP-858: Handle JBOD broker disk failure in KRaft	core	KIP Accepted Implementation not yet completed
KIP-890: Transactions Server-Side Defense	core	Part 1 Completed
KIP-896: Remove old client protocol API versions in Kafka 4.0 - metrics/request log changes to identify deprecated apis	core	KIP has enough votes Nov 22, 72 hours not completed
KIP-919: Allow AdminClient to Talk Directly with the KRaft Controller Quorum and add Controller Registration	core	KIP accepted
KIP-925: Rack aware task assignment in Kafka Streams	streams	KIP Accepted
KIP-951 - Leader discovery optimizations for the client	clients	Done
KIP-954: expand default DSL store configuration to custom types	streams	Done
KIP-959: Add BooleanConverter to Kafka Connect	connect	Done
KIP-960: Single-key single-timestamp IQv2 for state stores	streams	Done
KIP-962: Relax non-null key requirement in Kafka Streams	streams	Done
KIP-963: Additional metrics in Tiered Storage	core	KIP passed vote on November 21. Targetting 3.7
KIP-968: Support single-key_multi-timestamp Interactive Queries (IQv2) for Versioned State Stores	streams	Done
KIP-970: Deprecate and remove Connect's redundant task configurations endpoint	connect	Done (deprecation in 3.7.0, removal in 4.0.0)
KIP-975: Docker Image for Apache Kafka		Done
KIP-976: Cluster-wide dynamic log adjustment for Kafka Connect	connect	Done
KIP-978: Allow dynamic reloading of certificates with different DN / SANs	core	Done
KIP-979: Allow independently stop KRaft processes	core	Done
KIP-980: Allow creating connectors in a stopped state	connect	Done
KIP-985: Add reverseRange and reverseAll query over kv-store in IQv2	streams	Done
KIP-988: Streams Standby Update Listener	streams	Done
KIP-992: Proposal to introduce IQv2 Query Types: TimestampedKeyQuery and TimestampedRangeQuery	streams	Done
KIP-1000: List Client Metrics Configuration Resources	core	Done
KIP-1001: Add CurrentControllerId Metric	core	Done

Postponed to subsequent release

KIP	Component	Status
KIP-759: Unneeded repartition canceling	streams	KIP accepted
KIP-892: Transactional Semantics for StateStores	streams	KIP accepted
KIP-910: Update Source offsets for Source Connectors without producing records		Vote thread restarted on Nov 15 but no activity
KIP-912: Support decreasing send's block time without worrying about metadata's fetch		Vote thread started Nov 13 - no activity
KIP-913: add new method to provide possibility for accelerate first record's sending		Vote thread started Nov 13 - no activity
KIP-953: partition method to be overloaded to accept headers as well		Vote didn't pass
KIP-956 Tiered Storage Quotas	core	Discussion started Nov 22 (KIP Freeze Date)
KIP-967: Support custom SSL configuration for Kafka Connect RestServer		Vote didn't pass
KIP-969: Support range interactive queries (IQv2) for versioned state stores	streams
KIP-977: Partition-Level Throughput Metrics		2/3 binding votes on Nov 22 - didn't make the KIP Freeze
KIP-982: Enhance Custom KafkaPrincipalBuilder to Access SslPrincipalMapper and KerberosShortNamer		Vote didn't pass. Just one binding vote
KIP-997: update WindowRangeQuery and unify WindowKeyQuery and WindowRangeQuery	streams	Vote thread started November 17. Didn't get any votes by Nov 22
KIP-938: Add more metrics for measuring KRaft performance	core	Accepted. Majority was completed in 3.6. The remaining minority was planned to be done in 3.7.0, but it slipped (no PR opened)
KIP-998: Give ProducerConfig(props, doLog) constructor protected access	clients	KIP Accepted No PR merged for 3.7. Slipped