Release of v16.0.0

[GuptaManan100]

This release is scheduled for: Tuesday 28 February 2023.

Pre-Release

•  Notify the community on Slack.
• Add the Backport to: release-16.0 label
• Make sure the release notes summary is prepared and clean
  • Reorder summary in order of importance #12433
• Move items in the release notes so that important things are on top
• Clean up deprecated flags
• Draft the blog post
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aajX2wqeY1EHWyHwL70Tk0HU3RuMXSttp8S2_MABUPI/edit#heading=h.g4zhii7xl6mr
• Review blog post
• Create a PR for the blog post on the website repository
• Test the operator examples with the latest version of vitess-operator
• Make sure everyone in the release team has access to the Maven release website
• Prepare the x-posting of the blog post
  • PlanetScale
  • CNCF
• Backport PRs to verify
  • Fix bug in vtexplain around JOINs #12376
  • [release-16.0] SidecarDB Init: don't fail on schema init errors (#12328) #12431
  • Backport to v16: onlineddl_vrepl flakiness and subsequent fixes #12426
  • [release-16.0] Bump golang.org/x/net from 0.5.0 to 0.7.0 (#12390) #12400
  • [release-16.0] Update additional Go dependencies (#12401) #12402
  • [release-16.0] VReplication: ignore GC tables in schema analysis (#12320) #12362
  • [release-16.0] Examples: Add lib functions to wait for shard states (#12239) #12278
  • Schema RPC to fetch table/view definition #12375
  • [release-16.0] Fix bug in vtexplain around JOINs (#12376) #12384
  • Fix SHOW VSCHEMA TABLES tests using v17 vtgate that expected dual #12381
  • Examples: Correct VTAdmin Discovery File Path And Add Check #12415
  • VReplication: Use MariaDB Compat JSON Functions #12420
  • examples: Fix Vtop example and release script #12440
  • Sidecar schema init: use COPY algorithm while altering sidecardb tables #12436
  • Fix vtctldclient command in vtop test script and the fix operator example #12458
  • Fix scalar aggregation engine primitive for column truncation #12468
• Must Fix issues
  • Bug Report: operator example is probably broken on release-16.0 #12438
  • Bug Report: Error during unsharded keyspace backup (using xtrabackup) 16.0.0-rc.1 #12300
• Vitess Operator backport PRs to verify before release of operator
• Follow code-freeze/pre-release instructions from release documentation.

Release

• Follow the release instructions for release: here
• Continue with the Java release following these instructions.
• On the Vitess website repository, update the current and next version variables.
• Merge the 16.0.0 release notes on main.
• Make sure arewefastyet benchmarks the new release (https://benchmark.vitess.io/status)
• Release the operator, v2.9.0.

Post-Release

• Notify the community on Slack.
• Make sure the Java release is available
• Make sure the blog post is published on:
  • PlanetScale
  • CNCF
  • vitess.io
• Benchmarking results
• Tweet both vitess release and operator release
• archive v13.0.0