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Release Policy

Although Gateway API are an official Kubernetes project, and represent official APIs, these APIs will not be installed by default on Kubernetes clusters at this time. This project will use Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) to represent the new API types that Gateway API include.

Similar to other Kubernetes APIs, these will go through a formal Kubernetes Enhancement Proposal (KEP) review. Unlike other Kubernetes APIs, Gateway API releases will be independent from Kubernetes releases initially.

Gateway API releases will include four components:

  • Custom Resource Definitions to define the API.
  • Go client libraries.
  • Validation webhooks to implement cross field validations.
  • Conversion webhooks to convert resources between API versions.

Versioning

This project uses 2 different but related forms of versioning:

Each new API version will be released with a new semantic version. For example, v1alpha1 was released with v0.1.0. Before we release an API version, we may provide some release candidates such as v0.1.0-rc1 as a way to evaluate a new API version before it is formally released. All releases will be compatible with Go modules versioning.

As the API evolves, we will make intermediate releases that improve upon an existing API version. These releases will be fully backwards compatible and will be limited to either bug fixes or additions to the API.

This project may release one or more additional alpha API versions. New alpha API versions may include breaking changes such as removing or renaming fields or resources.

Following Semantic Versioning, new patch releases will be limited to bug fixes. New minor releases may include new fields or resources in addition to bug fixes. New API versions will be released with new minor or major versions.

Our changelog and release notes will always include both the semantic version and API version(s) included in the release.

The first release candidate was tagged as v1alpha1-rc1. It predates this documentation and is an exception.

Branching

This project will have frequent updates to the master branch. There are no compatibility guarantees associated with code in any branch, including master, until it has been released. For example, changes may be reverted before a release is published. For the best results, use the latest published release of this project.

Installation

This project will be responsible for providing straightforward and reliable ways to install releases of Gateway API.

Other Official Custom Resources

This is a relatively new concept, and there is only one previous example of official custom resources being used: VolumeSnapshots. Although VolumeSnapshot CRDs can be installed directly by CSI drivers that support them, Gateway API must support multiple controllers per cluster, so the CRDs will live in and be installed from this repo.

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