[VOTE] 3.4.0 RC1

[Sophie Blee-Goldman <so...@confluent.io.INVALID>]

Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers,

This is the first candidate for release of Apache Kafka 3.4.0. Some of the
major features include:

* KIP-881: Rack-aware Partition Assignment for Kafka Consumers
<
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-881%3A+Rack-aware+Partition+Assignment+for+Kafka+Consumers>
(protocol changes only)

* KIP-876: Time based cluster metadata snapshots
<
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-876%3A+Time+based+cluster+metadata+snapshots
>

* KIP-787: MM2 manage Kafka resources with custom Admin implementation.
<https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=191335620>

* KIP-866 ZooKeeper to KRaft Migration
<
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/KAFKA/KIP-866+ZooKeeper+to+KRaft+Migration
>
(Early
Access)

For a full list of the features in this release, please refer to the
release notes:
https://home.apache.org/~ableegoldman/kafka-3.4.0-rc1/RELEASE_NOTES.html

*** Please download, test and vote by Friday, Jan 27th, 9am PT

Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release:
https://kafka.apache.org/KEYS

* Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary):
https://home.apache.org/~ableegoldman/kafka-3.4.0-rc1/

* Maven artifacts to be voted upon:
https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/

* Javadoc:
https://home.apache.org/~ableegoldman/kafka-3.4.0-rc1/javadoc/

* Tag to be voted upon (off 3.4 branch) is the 3.4.0 tag:
https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/3.4.0-rc1

* Documentation:
https://kafka.apache.org/34/documentation.html

* Protocol:
https://kafka.apache.org/34/protocol.html

* Still working on getting a fully green build for both unit/integration
and system tests. I will update this thread with the successful builds as
we get them.

/**************************************

Thanks,
Sophie Blee-Goldman