Merge pull request #10183 from willie-yao/release-v1.6.2

🌱 Release v1.6.2

CHANGELOG/v1.6.2.md

@@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
+## 👌 Kubernetes version support
+
+- Management Cluster: v1.25.x -> v1.29.x
+- Workload Cluster: v1.23.x -> v1.29.x
+
+[More information about version support can be found here](https://cluster-api.sigs.k8s.io/reference/versions.html)
+
+## Highlights
+* :warning: Warning: This release fixes a bug (#10051) that was introduced in v1.6.0, which caused a regression in the conversion of v1alpha3/v1alpha4 objects. It is recommended to upgrade to v1.6.2 to avoid the issue.
+
+## Changes since v1.6.1
+## :chart_with_upwards_trend: Overview
+- 16 new commits merged
+- 3 bugs fixed 🐛
+
+## :bug: Bug Fixes
+- [API/e2e]: Restore v1alpha3/v1alpha4 conversion to fix SSA issue & add e2e test coverage (#10151)
+  - :warning: Warning: This change is a fix for the conversion bug that was introduced in v1.6.0.
+- ClusterCacheTracker: Fix ClusterCacheTracker memory leak (#10064)
+- Machine: Watch external objects for machine before deleting (#10177)
+
+## :seedling: Others
+- clusterctl: Bump cert-manager to v1.14.1 (#10120)
+- clusterctl: Clarify rules for adding new clusterctl default providers (#10109)
+- Community meeting: Promote chrischdi to Cluster API maintainer (#10089)
+- Dependency: Bump controller runtime v0.16.5 (#10163)
+- Dependency: Bump Go to 1.21.5 (#10152)
+- e2e: Use manager in test extension (#10106)
+- Testing: Print conformance image used in kubetest (#10081)
+
+:book: Additionally, there have been 4 contributions to our documentation and book. (#10024, #10047, #10105, #10116) 
+
+
+_Thanks to all our contributors!_ 😊