Hello! I did the following to validate the release candidate:
* Did a few random walks through the RELEASE NOTES, Javadocs, Maven artifacts, and repository * Checked the signatures of the tgzs with their keys * Compiled the src.tgz and ran the quickstart against the compiled source * Ran the quickstart against the binaries.tgz * Ran the quickstarts against both Docker images * Ran the system tests with no failures different to the ones you note My only note is to include a short blog post as a follow-up :) +1 (non-binding) Best, Christo On Thu, 19 Feb 2026 at 16:47, Viktor Somogyi-Vass <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers, > > This is the first candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.0.2. > > Since this is a patch version it contains the bug fixes outlined in the > release notes below! > > Release notes for the 4.0.2 release: > https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.0.2-rc1/RELEASE_NOTES.html > > *** Please download, test and vote by Friday 27. > > 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/4.0.2-rc1/ > > * Docker release artifacts to be voted upon: > apache/kafka:4.0.2-rc1 > apache/kafka-native:4.0.2-rc1 > > * Maven artifacts to be voted upon: > https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/ > > * Javadoc: > https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.0.2-rc1/javadoc/ > > * Tag to be voted upon (off 4.0 branch) is the 4.0.2 tag: > https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/4.0.2-rc1 > > * Documentation: > https://kafka.apache.org/40/documentation.html > > * Protocol: > https://kafka.apache.org/40/protocol.html > > * Successful CI builds for the 4.0 branch: > Unit/integration tests: > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062188033 > System tests: > https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rlVfSLFqZNjcsEJ1ZHwEXChyGqVWHasS?usp=sharing > Out of the 5 failures 3 were flaky (rerun was successful) and 2 are > persistent. I checked them back against 4.0.1 and 3.9.1 and they seem to be > present throughout the releases, so not new failures: > - > tests/kafkatest/tests/core/network_degrade_test.py::NetworkDegradeTest.test_rate@ > {"task_name":"rate-1000-latency-50","device_name":"eth0","latency_ms":50,"rate_limit_kbit":1000000,"metadata_quorum":"COMBINED_KRAFT"} > - > tests/kafkatest/tests/tools/replica_verification_test.py::ReplicaVerificationToolTest.test_replica_lags@ > {"metadata_quorum":"ISOLATED_KRAFT"} > > * Successful Docker Image Github Actions Pipeline for 4.0 branch: > Docker Build Test Pipeline (JVM): > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062306029 > Docker Build Test Pipeline (Native): > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/22062316512 > > Thanks, > Viktor
