Release of v18.0.6

[shlomi-noach]

Note

This release is scheduled for Tue 23 Jul 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.
  • Use release branches instead of git tags for upgrade/downgrade #16414
  • Fix RemoveTablet during TabletExternallyReparented causing connection issues #16371
  • [release-18.0] Release of v18.0.6 #16446
• Make sure release blocker items are closed, list below.

Code Freeze (~1-3 days before)

• Code Freeze.
  • [release-18.0] Code Freeze for v18.0.6 #16444
• Create new GitHub Milestone.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/milestone/65

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-18.0] Release of v18.0.6 #16446

Release (Tue 23 Jul)

• Merge the Release PR.
  • [release-18.0] Release of v18.0.6 #16446
• Tag the release.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/releases/tag/v18.0.6
• Update release notes on main.
  • [main] Copy v18.0.6 release notes #16453
• Go back to dev mode on the release branch.
  • [release-18.0] Bump to v18.0.7-SNAPSHOT after the v18.0.6 release #16454
• 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/61

Post-Release (Tue 23 Jul)

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

[shlomi-noach]

Release completed.