Prepare for Flux v2.2.0

[stefanprodan]

Flux 2.2.0 comes with new features, bug fixes and performance improvements.

📅 Target date: 12 December 2023

This version updates the Flux components to:

• Kubernetes v1.28
• Kustomize v5.3
• Helm v3.13
• Cosign v2.2 (Fix CVE-2023-46737)
• Go v1.21 (Fix CVE-2023-39326)
• Alpine v3.19

The Mean Time To Production benchmark results for this release can be found at github.com/fluxcd/flux-benchmark.

API Promotions

• HelmRelease v2beta2 (v2beta1 deprecated, scheduled for removal May 2024)
• Helm Drift detection and correction is no longer experimental (opt-in with HelmRelease.spec.driftDetection in v2beta2)
• Alert and Provider v1beta3 (v1beta1 and v1beta2 deprecated, scheduled for removal May 2024)

Features & Improvements

• Flux helm-controller's reconciliation model underwent a significant overhaul, addressing persistent issues such as the automatic recovery of releases stuck in a pending state. In addition, it improves the observability of the release status by reflecting more (historic) information in the status of the HelmRelease object. Lastly, it introduces the ability to enable drift detection on a per-object basis. This includes the option to ignore specific fields using Kustomize-like target selectors and JSON pointer paths.
• Flux helm-controller events & alerts have been extend to drift detection & correction and release uninstall.
• Flux source-controller allows identity matching for Cosign keyless verification for OCIRepository with .spec.verify. matchOIDCIdentity .
• Flux source-controller allows server-side filtering for Bucket with .spec.prefix.
• Flux source-controller optimise syncing of GitHub PRs / GitLab MRs with shallow clones.
• Flux source-controller allows pulling Helm OCI charts from insecure (non-TLS) container registries.
• Flux image-reflector-controller allows scanning image repos from insecure (non-TLS) container registries.
• Flux kustomize-controller GC will cleanup the pods belonging to stale Kubernetes Jobs at force apply.
• Flux notification-controller adds support for Bitbucket Server & Data Center commit status updates.
• Flux notification-controller adds support for sending events to NATS.
• Flux CLI adds --force and --reset flags to flux reconcile hr for one-off install/upgrade of a failed Helm release.
• Flux CLI comes with support for bootstrapping Gitea repositories with flux bootstrap gitea.
• Flux CLI adds guardrails to flux install and flux bootstrap to protect users from destructive operations.
• Flux CLI shows the in-cluster distribution version for flux version and flux check.

TODOs

• Rework HelmRelease reconciliation logic helm-controller#738
• Allow configuration of drift detection on HelmRelease helm-controller#815
• Correct cluster drift using patches helm-controller#822
• Static Alerts and Providers notification-controller#626
• Add Provider for NATS Subject notification-controller#651
• Confusing HelmRepository OCI status source-controller#1249
• cosign: allow identity matching for keyless verification  source-controller#1250
• bucket: Add prefix filtering capability source-controller#1228
• Add .spec.insecure to HelmRepository for type: oci source-controller#1288
• feat: add bootstrap gitea command #4270
• Prevent flux install from overriding bootrapped cluster #4345
• Confirm before overriding installation by another manager #4355
• Add force and reset flags to flux reconcile hr #4437
• Show distribution name in flux check and flux version #4424
• Update Flux controllers to Kustomize v5.2 #3991
• Support for Helm/Kustomization Uninstall Alerts #4432
• Add Bitbucket server/Bitbucket Data Center provider for git commit status notification-controller#639
• Cleanup pods when recreating Kubernetes Jobs kustomize-controller#997
• Support additional Field Managers in the disallow list kustomize-controller#1017
• imagerepo: add .spec.insecure to ImageRepository image-reflector-controller#472

Release checklist

Releases:

• source-controller v1.2.2
• kustomize-controller v1.2.0
• notification-controller v1.2.2
• helm-controller: v0.37.0
• image-reflector-controller v0.31.1
• image-automation-controller v0.37.0
• flux2 v2.2.0
• terraform-provider-flux v1.2.0

Documentation:

• Overhaul of HelmRelease API docs, examples and guides
• Update all docs references to HelmRelease v2beta2
• Update API docs and guides to Alert and Provider v1beta3
• Update Kustomize version to 5.3.0 in docs and example scripts
• Publish Flux release change log to GitHub & Slack
• Publish v2.2 docs

[mewzherder]

Please add text that explains links to the blog post and upcoming meetup. Something like "For more details and context for this release, please read our blog post [ blog post url ]. Also, join Priyanka "Pinky" Ravi and Max Werner on Monday, December 18. They will give an overview of the release and answer your questions. [ meetup url https://www.meetup.com/weave-user-group/events/297818586/] thanks!