Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers, This is the first candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.1.0.
The release brings many new features and improvements: - Mechanism for plugin to register metrics - Allow running multiple versions of connector plugins - Queue are now in preview access - New Streams rebalance protocol in early access - Support for OAuth jwt-bearer grant type - Improved metadata replication Release notes for the 4.1.0 release: https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.1.0-rc0/RELEASE_NOTES.html *** Please download, test and vote by Monday July 21 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/4.1.0-rc0/ * Docker release artifacts to be voted upon: apache/kafka:4.1.0-rc0 apache/kafka-native:4.1.0-rc0 * 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/4.1.0-rc0/javadoc/ * Tag to be voted upon (off 4.1 branch) is the 4.1.0 tag: https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/4.1.0-rc0 * Documentation: https://kafka.apache.org/41/documentation.html PR (https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/702) is not merged yet * Protocol: https://kafka.apache.org/41/protocol.html PR (https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/702) is not merged yet * Successful CI builds for the 4.1 branch: Unit/integration tests: https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/16198079614 * System tests results: - core: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JLpFBFbPV1N6cdh9EA9TGw9S5SZwkIpv/view?usp=drive_link - non-core: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15jCnTS-dssSHauW7uWxroiupkWaeUK7A/view?usp=drive_link I got 2 failures in the system tests: - 'tests/kafkatest/tests/client/consumer_test.py::OffsetValidationTest.test_broker_rolling_bounce@{"metadata_quorum":"ISOLATED_KRAFT","group_protocol":"classic"}' - '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"}' * Successful Docker Image Github Actions Pipeline for 4.1 branch: Docker Build Test Pipeline (JVM): https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/16172687407/ Docker Build Test Pipeline (Native): https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/16220242161 Note: As described in the release thread, the native image configuration files had to be updated. I'm not able to run the full system test suite with the GraalVM agent to generate the new configuration files. Luke has kindly run a few commands to produce a fix to the config files. I validated that the kafka-native:4.1.0-rc0 image passes the quickstart (clients, connect and streams), but as that image is only for development, I've not tested it any further. Also all the other release artifacts were generated before the fix to the native image configuration files was merged. As these files are not part of any of the other release artifacts and as this is rc0, I deemed that acceptable. Thanks, Mickael
