Re: 4.4.0 Release Manager

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:51:18 -0700

I am not sure if we should apply the schedule we discussed on the other thread to 2025 already? Also, it's still a proposal only.
Of course, we need to find a way, assuming we adopt the proposal, to align to the new schedule. But I would personally rather stretch some releases, instead of squeezing them to get there. 


We aim for 3 releases per year and we did already release 4.2 and 4.3 in 
2025. Applying the discussed schedule, would imply we release 4.4 in 
September, and 4.5 in Dec, making it 4 releases, and overall squeezing 
the release timeline. I personally don't see a need for this?



Thus, my thought was that we would only aim for 4.4 in 2025, and do 4.5 
in 2026. I am also ok to move 4.4 back by only two weeks as Bill 
proposed (KIP freeze Jun/29).



This might imply that we start the release for 4.5 late Q4/25 or early 
Q1/26, not yet taking the holiday season fully into account, and have 
the first release following the new timeline with 4.6?



Curious to hear what Omnia as RM thinks.


-Matthias


On 6/2/26 6:51 PM, Chia-Ping Tsai wrote:

Not sure whether I mislead anything. According to 
https://lists.apache.org/thread/dgmmpxsbp7cm85dw56cn5sz6g3skthch, the KIP 
freeze of 4.4.0 should be June 17th

Thanks,
Chia-Ping

On 2026/06/02 21:58:07 Bill Bejeck wrote:

Hi All,

Thanks Matthias for the KIP freeze date proposal.  Based on the
conversation on the tightened-release-schedule thread (
https://lists.apache.org/thread/dgmmpxsbp7cm85dw56cn5sz6g3skthch) I'm
wondering if moving KIP freeze from June 15th -> July 15th is too much of a
jump.  What do you think about setting KIP freeze July 1st (making feature
freeze July 22nd)?

-Bill

On Tue, Jun 2, 2026 at 12:53 PM Sahil Devgon <[email protected]>
wrote:


Hello,

I just added KIP-1291 to the release plan.

Thanks,
Sahil Devgon

On Tue, Jun 2, 2026 at 9:00 PM Matthias J. Sax <[email protected]> wrote:


Sorry for late reply.

Yes, I mean to do KIP freeze only 15th July (Wednesday) instead of 15th
June (Monday) as proposed today.

Seems there was no objections so far? Should we update the release plan
accordingly?


-Matthias

On 6/2/26 3:24 AM, Maroš Orsák wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have added KIP-1276 in the release plan.

Cheers,
Maros

st 27. 5. 2026 o 8:50 <[email protected]> napísal(a):


Hi Matthias,
So you mean move 4.4 to mid October? The worries about future releases

in

holiday season totally make sense. If everyone okay with Oct I can

move

the

plan more towards mid Oct and maybe give extra week for KIP freeze as

well


Best
Omnia
Sent from my iPhone


On 27 May 2026, at 06:43, Matthias J. Sax <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi,

I was just looking into the proposed plan a little bit, and while

this

plan is good considering 4.4 release, it make we worry about 4.5

release --

if we aim for 4.5 with our 4-months cycle, it will fall onto the

holidays

again (and we learned from 4.2 and other "holiday" releases, that this

does

not "end well").


So I was wondering if we should shift this all back by one month,

making

it a 5-month cycle for 4.4 instead? I also started a general

discussion

on

time-based releases, which will explain my overall reasoning.


Thoughts?


-Matthias


On 5/26/26 11:05 AM, Omnia Ibrahim wrote:
Hi Bill and Lianet, I have updated the schedule to the following
KIP Freeze: (15th June 2026)
Feature Freeze: (6th July 2026)
Code Freeze: (27th July 2026)
At least four weeks of stabilization will follow Code Freeze (taking

holidays into account), meaning we expect to release no earlier than
September 14 2026.

Hopefully this is better
Thanks
Omnia

On 26 May 2026, at 16:29, Lianet Magrans <[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi again :) another thought about the high level target.

The proposed initial deadline (KIP freeze on June 8) shortens the 4

month

window (4.3 KIP freeze was Feb 25). Any reason for shortening this

or

could

we consider updating all dates to keep the ~4 month window between
deadlines and the final release? Release would target mid September
(instead of the proposed September 1st) With 4.3 released May 22nd,

we

would still be within a release every 4 months with 4.4 targeting
mid-September. Thoughts?

Thanks!
Lianet


On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 10:27 AM Bill Bejeck <[email protected]>

wrote:



Hi Omnia,

Thanks for the updated release plan but my intention was that we

move

the

feature freeze date out ot July 18th and keep the code freeze

where

it was

previously.

Thanks!
Bill

On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 9:41 AM Lianet Magrans <

[email protected]>

wrote:



Hi Omnia,

Thanks for the update on the code freeze (it brings back the ~3

weeks

after

feature freeze).

But still, we have only 2 weeks between KIP and FF. Should we

move

the

feature freeze date to allow for ~3 weeks after KIP freeze? (FF ~

June

29).

Similar to what we had for 4.3 (~3 weeks in between each

deadline)

.


Thanks!
Lianet





On Sat, May 23, 2026 at 3:37 AM <[email protected]> wrote:


Thanks Bill,
I updated the code freeze to 20th of July

Thanks
Omnia
Sent from my iPhone


On 22 May 2026, at 19:41, Bill Bejeck <[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi Omnia,

Thanks again for the 4.4 release plan.

The release plan has June 23 as the feature freeze with code

freeze

of

August 8, which is roughly 6 weeks.  For 4.3 there was 3 weeks

between

feature and code freeze, so can we adjust feature freeze to

July

18th?


Thanks!
Bill


On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 2:30 PM Bill Bejeck <

[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi Omnia,

Thanks for the release plan.
I've updated it to include KIP-892.

-Bill

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 2:06 PM Omnia Ibrahim <

[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi everyone thanks for support on this.
I have put an initial release plan to the wiki




https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/Release+Plan+4.4.0

If

I've missed a KIP, feel free to add it to the list.

The initial goal is to aim for Sep 2026 for this release and

KIP

freeze

8th Jun 2026.

Let me know if you have any questions.


On 15 May 2026, at 09:04, Christo Lolov <

[email protected]



wrote:


Hello,

Thanks for stepping forward Omnia, +1 from me!

Best,
Christo

On Fri, 15 May 2026 at 02:52, Ming-Yen Chung <

[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi all,

+1, thanks Omnia for running 4.4 release!

I'd also like to push KIP-1232: Deprecate broker.id config

into

the

4.4

release.

Best,
Ming-Yen

Muralidhar Basani via dev <[email protected]> 於

2026年5月15日週五

上午3:57寫道：



Hi all,

Thanks Omnia for volunteering for 4.4.0.
+1 from me too.

I'd also like to add KIP-1325 (adding a new streams config

to

handle

restore-state path) to 4.4 release.

Thanks,
Murali

On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 1:59 PM TaiJu Wu <

[email protected]>

wrote:



Hi all,

+1 , thanks Omnia for running 4.4 release!

Best,
TaiJuWu

黃竣陽 <[email protected]> 於 2026年5月14日週四 下午7:52寫道：


Hi all,

+1

Thanks Omnia for running 4.4 release!

And I’d also like to push KIP-1327: Prevent Hot Data

Loss

on

Partition

Expansion for Latest Policy
into the 4.4 release.

Best Regards,
Jiunn-Yang


PoAn Yang <[email protected]> 於 2026年5月14日 晚上7:37 寫道：

Hi all,

Thanks Omnia for running 4.4 release! +1 from me.

Regards,
PoAn


On May 14, 2026, at 3:59 AM, Lianet Magrans <

[email protected]



wrote:


Hi all,

Thanks Omnia for volunteering for 4.4! +1 from me.

We're working on KIP-1332: Dynamic memory allocation

for

the

Kafka

producer, under discussion at the moment but aiming

at a

phased

delivery

starting in 4.4 (I updated the jiras)

Best!
Lianet

On Wed, May 13, 2026 at 7:35 AM Omnia Ibrahim <

[email protected]>

wrote:


Thanks Chia for starting the thread and for the

support

with

my

first

release process,

I had a quick look into open and resolved issues on

jira

and

I

can

see

we

have
66 resolved tickets.
43 open tickets (with status not resolved, or closed)

The KIPs I can see marked for 4.4.0, have sub-tasks

marked

for

4.4.0

or

remaining followups are
KIP-1191: Dead-letter queues for share groups <




















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1191%3A+Dead-letter+queues+for+share+groups



majority of it has been resolved and marked for 4.4.0

except

single

remaining jira which in progress
KIP-892: Transactional Semantics for StateStores <




















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-892%3A+Transactional+Semantics+for+StateStores



is also marked for 4.4.0 but it has too many

in-progress

tasks

at

the

moment
KIP-1263: Group Coordinator Assignment Batching and

Offload <





















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1263%3A+Group+Coordinator+Assignment+Batching+and+Offload



it has a couple of open jiras one of them marked for

4.4.0

Single resolved jira for KIP-1226: Introducing Share

Partition

Lag

Persistence and Retrieval <




















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1226%3A+Introducing+Share+Partition+Lag+Persistence+and+Retrieval



Open Jira for KIP-1298: Per-Resource-Type

Authorization

for

LIST_CONFIG_RESOURCES <




















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1298%3A+Per-Resource-Type+Authorization+for+LIST_CONFIG_RESOURCES?src=jira



but this still under discussion
Open Jira for KIP-1170: Unify cluster metadata

bootstrapping

<





















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1170%3A+Unify+cluster+metadata+bootstrapping?src=jira



Open Jira for KIP-1260: Enable ProducerPerformance to

abort

transactions <





















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-1260%3A+Enable+ProducerPerformance+to+abort+transactions



but this still under discussion
KIP-939: Support Participation in 2PC <




















https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-939%3A+Support+Participation+in+2PC



marked for 4.4.0 but I can it still has couple of

jiras

still

not

resolved

Some open jiras as followup for KIP-853

Best
Omnia


On 13 May 2026, at 11:21, Chia-Ping Tsai <

[email protected]>

wrote:


Hi all,

While there are still a few pending RCs, I'd like to

start

the

discussion

for the 4.4.0 Release Manager. Omnia has raised her

hand

offline,

and

we

(myself and our team) are fully committed to

supporting

her

throughout

her

first release process.

Of course, please feel free to shout out if anyone

else

is

also

interested

in volunteering or co-managing this release.

Best, Chia-Ping

































































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