Documenting a feature for a release

Each major Kubernetes release introduces new features that require documentation. New releases also bring updates to existing features and documentation (such as upgrading a feature from alpha to beta).

Generally, the SIG responsible for a feature submits draft documentation of the feature as a pull request to the appropriate development branch of the kubernetes/website repository, and someone on the SIG Docs team provides editorial feedback or edits the draft directly. This section covers the branching conventions and process used during a release by both groups.

For documentation contributors

In general, documentation contributors don't write content from scratch for a release. Instead, they work with the SIG creating a new feature to refine the draft documentation and make it release ready.

The release schedule contains links to all other documents, meetings, meeting minutes, and milestones relating to the release. It also contains information about the goals and timeline of the release, and any special processes in place for this release. Near the bottom of the document, several release-related terms are defined.

This document also contains a link to the Feature tracking sheet, which is the official way to find out about all new features scheduled to go into the release.

The release team document lists who is responsible for each release role. If it's not clear who to talk to about a specific feature or question you have, either attend the release meeting to ask your question, or contact the release lead so that they can redirect you.

The release notes draft is a good place to find out about specific features, changes, deprecations, and more about the release. The content is not finalized until late in the release cycle, so use caution.

Feature tracking sheet

• Beta and Stable features are generally a higher documentation priority than Alpha features.
• It's hard to test (and therefore to document) a feature that hasn't been merged, or is at least considered feature-complete in its PR.
• Determining whether a feature needs documentation is a manual process. Even if a feature is not marked as needing docs, you may need to document the feature.

For developers or other SIG members

This section is information for members of other Kubernetes SIGs documenting new features for a release.

Open a placeholder PR

If your feature does not need any documentation changes, make sure the sig-release team knows this, by mentioning it in the #sig-release Slack channel. If the feature does need documentation but the PR is not created, the feature may be removed from the milestone.

PR ready for review

When ready, populate your placeholder PR with feature documentation and change the state of the PR from draft to ready for review. To mark a pull request as ready for review, navigate to the merge box and click Ready for review.

Do your best to describe your feature and how to use it. If you need help structuring your documentation, ask in the #sig-docs slack channel.

When you complete your content, the documentation person assigned to your feature reviews it. To ensure technical accuracy, the content may also require a technical review from corresponding SIG(s). Use their suggestions to get the content to a release ready state.