The Linux Foundation Member Summit 2022

Kubernetes releases are an elaborate song and dance running for 4 months 3 times a year. The releases are done by a team of around 40 people distributed across the globe. A large number of technical components and the distributed nature of the team pose various challenges to the process. In this talk, I will cover a detailed view of the parts of a Kubernetes release: the ingredients, the recipe and the product, and finally, the learnings from leading a release. Releases are often trivialized in form of automation run by a single person. This works well for smaller projects. But, for large software projects like Kubernetes, it doesn't scale well when 50 features are set to be released in every release timeframe. It requires meticulous planning and adherence to timelines. Discpline in terms of time is required as thousands of vendors and customers depend on the project to be released on time. The are four chapters to the talk: 1. People 2. Process 3. Challenges 4. Learnings