On 2026/01/19 16:27:23 Christo Lolov wrote:
> Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers,
>
> This is the RC1 candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.2.0.
>
> This release has many exciting changes:
> * Kafka Queues (Share Groups) is now production-ready with new
> features like the RENEW acknowledgement type for extended processing
> times, adaptive batching for coordinators, and comprehensive lag
> metrics.
> * Kafka Streams brings the server-side rebalance protocol to GA with a
> limited feature set, adds dead letter queue support in exception
> handlers, introduces anchored wall-clock punctuation for deterministic
> scheduling, and gives users full control over whether to send a leave
> group request on closing.
> * This release also delivers significant improvements to consistency
> and observability: CLI tools now feature standardized arguments like
> --bootstrap-server across all tools, metric naming has been corrected
> to follow the kafka.COMPONENT convention, and new idle ratio metrics
> provide better visibility into controller and MetadataLoader
> performance.
> * Security is enhanced with a new allowlist connector client
> configuration override policy, while thread-safety improvements to
> RecordHeader eliminate concurrency risks.
> * Additional highlights include external schema support in
> JsonConverter for reduced message sizes, dynamic configuration for
> remote log manager thread pools, and rack ID exposure in the Admin API
> for consumer and share group members.
>
> Release notes for the 4.2.0 release:
> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.2.0-rc1/RELEASE_NOTES.html
>
> *** Please download, test and vote by Monday, January 26, 10am UTC
>
> Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release:
> https://kafka.apache.org/KEYS
>
> * Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary):
> https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.2.0-rc1/
>
+1 (non-binding)
* Verified signatures and hashes on the following files as per
https://apache.org/info/verification.html
- kafka-4.2.0-src.tgz (SHA1, SHA512, GPG signature)
- kafka_2.13-4.2.0-site-docs.tgz (SHA1, SHA512, GPG signature)
- kafka_2.13-4.2.0.tgz (SHA512, SHA1, GPG signature)
* Verified LICENSE and NOTICE files
