Release of `v21.0.0`

[vitess-bot]

Note

This release is scheduled for Tue 29 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.
  • [release-21.0] Add release notes for known issue in v21.0.0 #17067
  • Improve Schema Engine's TablesWithSize80 query #17066
  • Fix unreachable errors when taking a backup #17062
  • [Direct PR][release-21.0] Add RPC changes segment in the summary doc #17034
  • Fix flakiness in TestListenerShutdown #17024
  • [release-21.0] fix: flaky test on twopc transaction (#17068) #17070
  • [release-21.0] bugfix: treat EXPLAIN like SELECT (#17054) #17058
  • [release-21.0] Change the name of the vitess-tester repository (#16917) #17030
  • Fix to prevent stopping buffering prematurely #17013
  • [release-21.0] Release of v21.0.0 #17082
  • [release-21.0] Delegate Column Availability Checks to MySQL for Single-Route Queries (#17077) #17087
  • [release-21.0] Improve Schema Engine's TablesWithSize80 query (#17066) #17091
  • Fix panic in vttablet when closing topo server twice #17094
  • [release-21.0] Bump to v21.0.1-SNAPSHOT after the v21.0.0 release #17098
  • LookupVindex: fix CLI to allow creating non-unique lookups with single column #17301
  • Do not use gh-hosted-runners-16cores-1 runners on forks #17237
• Make sure release blocker items are closed, list below.

Code Freeze (~1-3 days before)

• Code Freeze.
• 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-21.0] Release of v21.0.0 #17082
• Update Cobra Docs.

Release (Tue 29 Oct)

• Merge the Release PR.
  • [release-21.0] Release of v21.0.0 #17082
• Tag the release.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/releases/tag/v21.0.0
• Update release notes on main.
  • [main] Copy v21.0.0 release notes #17097
• Go back to dev mode on the release branch.
  • [release-21.0] Bump to v21.0.1-SNAPSHOT after the v21.0.0 release #17098
• Update the website documentation.
• Make sure the release is benchmarked by arewefastyet.
• Docker Images available on DockerHub.
• Close current GitHub Milestone.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/milestone/63
• Check that release artifacts were generated.

Post-Release (Tue 29 Oct)

• Notify the community on Slack for the new release.
• Twitter announcement.
• Remove bypass branch protection rules, if required.
• Close this Issue.