+1 (non-binding) Validated 5.0.1-candidate-2 on Linux x86_64 with OpenJDK 21.0.12.1 for the build/server and OpenJDK 17.0.20.1 for the client.
- Verified SHA-512 checksums and PGP signatures for the source and server binary distributions, and the signed Git tag. The source archive matches the candidate tag at commit 9ef1a62af60850cfae91c386e8d3bf84aa401a5c. - Built from source with ./gradlew assemble rat. RAT reported no unapproved licenses. - Passed all 21 ManagedCursorInfoMetadataTest cases with retries disabled, including the candidate-2 compressed cursor metadata regression. - Verified Java 17 client pub/sub, negative-acknowledgement redelivery, and message recovery after restarting the binary standalone service. Also completed the advanced validation guide's runtime checks using ZooKeeper, the process runtime, and BookKeeper state storage: - Java Exclamation function: verified all 10 transformed outputs. - Stateful WordCount function: verified the counter increased from 10 to 20. - Cassandra sink: verified all 11 database rows and their contents using connector 4.2.5 and Cassandra 3.11. No blocking issues were found in these checks. I did not run the full integration suite, upgrade/downgrade, multi-node, Oxia, V5 runtime, or offloader runtime tests. Thanks, void-ptr974
