[Retrospective] Release Version 1.3.15

[jordarlu]

Related release issue?

#4294

How to use this issue?

Please add comments to this issue, they can be small or large in scope. Honest feedback is important to improve our processes, suggestions are also welcomed but not required.

What will happen to this issue post release?

There will be a discussion(s) about how the release went and how the next release can be improved. Then this ticket will be updated with the notes of that discussion along side action items.

[jordarlu]

While preparing for the release of version 1.3.15, all standalone plugins encountered a problem due to spotlessJava no longer supporting JDK8. Plugin maintainers had to either removing JDK8 from the CI checks or proceeding despite the CI check failures.

example : https://github.com/opensearch-project/k-NN/actions/runs/8104336598/job/22150747472#step:5:56

Could not determine the dependencies of task ':spotlessCheck'.
> Could not create task ':spotlessJavaCheck'.
   > Could not create task ':spotlessJava'.
      > Could not create task of type 'SpotlessTaskImpl'.
         > Could not generate a decorated class for type SpotlessTaskImpl.
            > org/eclipse/jgit/lib/AnyObjectId has been compiled by a more recent version of the Java Runtime (class file version 55.0), this version of the Java Runtime only recognizes class file versions up to 52.0

There is probably not much to follow up on this item, but to record JDK8 CI check has been removed from some standalong plugins.

[jordarlu]

in the PA version incremental PR, there was a CI check failure caused by the dependancy between PA and PA-RCA. We want to follow up on this issue and fix it for a long run.
opensearch-project/performance-analyzer#612

[jordarlu]

The OSD dashboards-visualization team noted in PR #4375 that for all forthcoming release versions (>=3.0.0, >=2.12.0, >=1.3.15), the manifest file should exclude the working_directory: gantt-chart. However, this directive was overlooked during the preparation of the input manifest.
This issue later got addressed by PR #4492. We are seeking to have a more effective method for communicating such information in the future.

In all future release versions (>=3.0.0, >=2.12.0, >=1.3.15), the manifest file should not include working_directory: gantt-chart

[jordarlu]

We need an efficient mechanism to manage CVEs, particularly the critical ones.

[jordarlu]

closing this issue for now as not much to do in action items at moment