Hi All! @Maximilian Michels <m...@apache.org> has raised the question of Flink version support in the operator before the last release. I would like to open this discussion publicly so we can finalize this before the next release.
Background: Currently the Flink Operator supports all Flink versions since Flink 1.13. While this is great for the users, it introduces a lot of backward compatibility related code in the operator logic and also adds considerable time to the CI. We should strike a reasonable balance here that allows us to move forward and eliminate some of this tech debt. In the current model it is also impossible to support all features for all Flink versions which leads to some confusion over time. Proposal: Since it's a key feature of the kubernetes operator to support several versions at the same time, I propose to support the last 4 stable Flink minor versions. Currently this would mean to support Flink 1.14-1.17 (and drop 1.13 support). When Flink 1.18 is released we would drop 1.14 support and so on. Given the Flink release cadence this means about 2 year support for each Flink version. What do you think? Cheers, Gyula
