Hi Omnia, Thanks for running the 4.4.0 release.
I did the following to validate RC3: - Verified checksums (md5/sha1/sha512) and GPG signatures - Artifacts: source, binary, site-docs, RELEASE_NOTES - Signed by Omnia Ibrahim <[email protected]> - Key 1817905E3B2708B11A24B88E9AFA6F66CC8C3534 - Built from source with JDK 17 - Ran the core, clients and streams unit tests - Ran quickstarts from the bundled site-docs against the binary distribution - Broker quickstart - Kafka Streams WordCount quickstart - Used both the classic and streams (KIP-1071) group protocols - Ran the same quickstarts against the Docker images - apache/kafka:4.4.0-rc3 - apache/kafka-native:4.4.0-rc3 - Checked shipped jar versions for the dependency and CVE bumps - jackson-databind 2.21.7 - log4j 2.25.5 - jetty 12.0.39 - lz4-java 1.11.2 - zstd-jni 1.5.7-17 - Exercised these KIPs by hand against local clusters - Streams: - KIP-892 (WordCount with EOS and transactional state stores) - KIP-1071 static membership - KIP-1245, KIP-1283, KIP-1284, KIP-1321 - KIP-1331, KIP-1340, KIP-1356, KIP-1357 - Broker: - KIP-1170, KIP-1191, KIP-1200, KIP-1220 - KIP-1232, KIP-1241 (configs only), KIP-1276 - KIP-1291, KIP-1301, KIP-1312, KIP-1323 - Clients: - KIP-909, KIP-1242, KIP-1299 - KIP-1319 (smoke test) +1 (binding) On Wed, Sep 30, 2026 at 8:46 AM Omnia Ibrahim <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Kafka users, developers and client-developers, > > This is the latest candidate for release of Apache Kafka 4.4.0. > > Apache Kafka 4.4.0 is a minor release that includes 26 KIPs spanning > improvements to all components. > > Release notes for the 4.4.0 release: > https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc3/RELEASE_NOTES.html > > Please download, test and vote by Monday, October 5, 2026 9:00am PT > (5:00pm BST) > > Kafka's KEYS file containing PGP keys we use to sign the release: > https://downloads.apache.org/kafka/KEYS > > Release artifacts to be voted upon (source and binary): > https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc3/ > > Docker release artifacts to be voted upon: > apache/kafka:4.4.0-rc3 > apache/kafka-native:4.4.0-rc3 > > Maven artifacts to be voted upon: > https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/staging/org/apache/kafka/ > > Javadoc: > https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/kafka/4.4.0-rc3/javadoc/index.html > > Tag to be voted upon (off 4.4 branch) is the 4.4.0 tag: > https://github.com/apache/kafka/releases/tag/4.4.0-rc3 > > Documentation: > PR: https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/905 > > Protocol: > PR: https://github.com/apache/kafka-site/pull/905 > > Successful CI builds for the 4.4 branch: > Unit/integration tests: > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/35717651111 > System tests: > > https://confluent-open-source-kafka-branch-builder-system-test-results.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/trunk/2026-09-29--001.848a9baa-1456-4d89-9687-767d6e3d7b68--1790727085--apache--4.4--eb64514482/report.html > Lianet Magrans is helping with running system tests on confluent servers — > there is a new failed test from connect, there is a believe that this might > have been happening before in previous releases too (so Lianet triggered it > now in isolation to check if it passes) > > Successful Docker Image Github Actions Pipeline for 4.4 branch: > Docker Build Test Pipeline (JVM): > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/36611597689 > Docker Build Test Pipeline (Native): > https://github.com/apache/kafka/actions/runs/36611597689 > > Thanks, > Omnia
