Document v1alpha1 deprecation timeline

[robscott]

With v1alpha2 released and v1alpha1 effectively frozen, we should document how long v1alpha1 will continue to exist in this repo. Maybe we should announce deprecation now + the plan to formally remove the API version from the repo in our next minor release (v0.5.0).

A big thanks to @ccfishk for originally raising this in #903 (comment)!

[hbagdi]

I think we should do two docs update to communicate:

• v1alpha1 is not going to receive any support, please move to v1alpha2
• v1alpha1 will be dropped from the repo once v1alpha3 or v1beta1 is released

Mixing minor releases with API version releases is a bit confusing (maybe because that is new?).

[bowei]

There is no such thing as Deprecation for alphas.
Removal of v1alpha1 t doesn't need to wait for an API version to remove.

[robscott]

Mixing minor releases with API version releases is a bit confusing

Yeah I do get that, but I don't think we can always tie removal of API versions with introduction of newer API versions. At some point, there will be no more new API versions to add. I think we're roughly trying to follow Kubernetes versioning guidelines which do include additions and removals of APIs along with minor k8s releases. Unfortunately I'm not seeing any clear upstream documentation for the relationship between API groups/versions and Kubernetes versions (looking at https://kubernetes.io/releases/version-skew-policy/ and https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/contributors/design-proposals/release/versioning.md#kubernetes-release-versioning). We likely need clearer documentation around how this works though, at least for Gateway API.

[k8s-triage-robot]

The Kubernetes project currently lacks enough contributors to adequately respond to all issues and PRs.

This bot triages issues and PRs according to the following rules:

• After 90d of inactivity, lifecycle/stale is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/stale was applied, lifecycle/rotten is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/rotten was applied, the issue is closed

You can:

• Mark this issue or PR as fresh with /remove-lifecycle stale
• Mark this issue or PR as rotten with /lifecycle rotten
• Close this issue or PR with /close
• Offer to help out with Issue Triage

Please send feedback to sig-contributor-experience at kubernetes/community.

/lifecycle stale

[robscott]

/remove-lifecycle stale
/assign

[k8s-triage-robot]

The Kubernetes project currently lacks enough contributors to adequately respond to all issues and PRs.

This bot triages issues and PRs according to the following rules:

• After 90d of inactivity, lifecycle/stale is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/stale was applied, lifecycle/rotten is applied
• After 30d of inactivity since lifecycle/rotten was applied, the issue is closed

You can:

• Mark this issue or PR as fresh with /remove-lifecycle stale
• Mark this issue or PR as rotten with /lifecycle rotten
• Close this issue or PR with /close
• Offer to help out with Issue Triage

Please send feedback to sig-contributor-experience at kubernetes/community.

/lifecycle stale

[youngnick]

/remove-lifecycle stale