Release v0.231.0

🚀 Features

• Add connectionTracking support to nodegroup config (#8872)
• Add TerminatedPodGcThreshold to control plane component config (#8853)
• Add support for vpc.controlPlaneOnPrivateSubnets (#8793)

🎯 Improvements

• chore: harden addon warning logging and empty drain (#8869)
• ci: harden the release pipeline — isolate EKSCTLBOT_TOKEN, sign releases, publish SBOMs (#8863)
• ci: pass workflow inputs to run steps via env vars (#8860)

🐛 Bug Fixes

• fix: resolve latest addon version before pod identity lookup (#8867)
• chore: harden addon warning logging and empty drain (#8869)
• fix: use interruptionQueue Helm value for Karpenter >= v0.33.0 (#8844)
• Grant ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups to the IPv6 VPC CNI role (#8837)

🧰 Maintenance

• ci: harden the release pipeline — isolate EKSCTLBOT_TOKEN, sign releases, publish SBOMs (#8863)
• ci: pass workflow inputs to run steps via env vars (#8860)
• Update ec2-info (#8854)
• Update coredns (#8842)
• Update coredns (#8841)
• Update nvidia-device-plugin to v0.20.0 (#8840)

📝 Documentation

• docs: explain addon version differences (#8868)

Acknowledgments

The eksctl maintainers would like to sincerely thank @atharvaHJoshi, @chithreshazad, @guessi, @gustavodiaz7722, @sapphirew, @warren830, @chithresha and @michaelbeaumont.