Release of `v21.0.0-RC1`

[vitess-bot]

Note

This release is scheduled for Thu 10 Oct 2024.
Release team: @vitessio/release

Important

Please do not edit the content of the Issue's body manually.
The vitess-releaser tool is managing and handling this issue.
You can however click on the check boxes to mark them as done/not done, and write comments.

Prerequisites (~2 weeks before)

• General prerequisites.
  • Be part of the Release team in the vitessio GitHub organization, here.
  • Be an admin of the planetscale/vitess-operator repository.
  • Have access to Vitess' Java repository and have it working locally, guide here.
  • Have vitessio/vitess and planetscale/vitess-operator cloned in the same parent directory.
• Notify the community on Slack.
• Make sure the release notes summary is prepared and clean.
• Make sure important Pull Requests are merged, list below.
• Make sure release blocker items are closed, list below.

Code Freeze (1 week before)

• Code Freeze.
• Copy branch protection rules.
• Create new labels.
• Update the SNAPSHOT version on main.
• Create new GitHub Milestone.

Pre-Release (~1-3 days before)

• Create Release PR. _{^{(We do this earlier to catch any issues in the tool and let CI run.)}}

Release (Thu 10 Oct)

• Merge the Release PR.
• Tag the release.
• Update release notes on main.
• Update release notes on the release branch.
• Go back to dev mode on the release branch.
• Update the website documentation.
• Make sure the release is benchmarked by arewefastyet.
• Docker Images available on DockerHub.

Post-Release (Thu 10 Oct)

• Notify the community on Slack for the new release.
• Twitter announcement.
• Close this Issue.