Release of v18.0.5

[systay]

This release is scheduled for Mon 6 May 2024

Prerequisites for Release

• Notify the community on Slack.
• Make sure the release notes summary is prepared and clean.
• Make sure backport Pull Requests are merged, list below.
  • [release-18.0] Direct PR. Fix regression where reference tables with a different name on sharded keyspaces were not routed correctly. #15788
  • [VTAdmin API] Replace underscores with dashes in cluster ID #15722
  • Do not load table stats when booting vttablet. #15715
  • Match MySQL's LAST_INSERT_ID behaviour when no rows are inserted / updated #15699
  • [18.x] Fix schemacopy collation issues #15859
  • Update env.sh so that is does not error when running on Mac #15835
  • v18 backport: schemadiff: fix diffing of textual columns with implicit charsets #15873
  • [release-18.0] Release of v18.0.5 #15883
• Make sure release blocker Issues are closed, list below.

Pre-Release

• Code Freeze.
• Create Release PR.
  • [release-18.0] Release of v18.0.5 #15883
• Create new GitHub Milestone.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/milestone/61

Release

• Merge the Release PR.
  • [release-18.0] Release of v18.0.5 #15883
• Tag the release.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/releases/tag/v18.0.5
• Update release notes on main.
  • Copy v18.0.5 release notes on main #15886
• Go back to dev mode on the release branch.
  • [release-18.0] Bump to v18.0.6-SNAPSHOT after the v18.0.5 release #15888
• Update the website documentation.
• Make sure the release is benchmarked by arewefastyet.
• Docker Images available on DockerHub.
• Close current GitHub Milestone.
  • https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/milestone/58

Post-Release

• Notify the community on Slack for the new release.
• Twitter announcement.
• Close this Issue.

[shlomi-noach]

Release completed.