We are delighted to present version v1.23.0 of Contour, our layer 7 HTTP reverse proxy for Kubernetes clusters.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the release.

• Major Changes
• Minor Changes
• Other Changes
• Docs Changes
• Deprecations/Removals
• Installing/Upgrading
• Compatible Kubernetes Versions
• Community Thanks!

Major Changes

Overload Manager

It is now possible to enable Envoy overload manager to avoid traffic disturbances when Envoy process allocates too much heap and is terminated by the Linux out-of-memory manager.
The feature is disabled by default and can be enabled by following instructions here.

(#4597, @tsaarni)

JWT Verification Support

Contour's HTTPProxy now supports configuring Envoy's JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication filter, for verifying JWTs on incoming requests.

A root HTTPProxy can optionally define one or more JWT providers, each of which can define an issuer, audiences, and a JSON Web Key Set (JWKS) to use for verifying JWTs.

JWT providers can then be applied as requirements to routes on the HTTPProxy (or routes on included HTTPProxies), either by setting one provider as the default, or by explicitly specifying a JWT provider to require for a given route.
Individual routes may also opt out of JWT verification if a default provider has been set for the HTTPProxy.

For more information, see:

• JWT verification documentation
• JWTProvider API documentation
• JWTVerificationPolicy API documentation

(#4723, @skriss)

Slow start mode

Slow start mode is a configuration setting that is used to gradually increase the amount of traffic targeted to a newly added upstream endpoint.
This can be useful for example with JVM based applications, that might otherwise get overwhelmed during JIT warm-up period.
For more information see here.

(#4772, @tsaarni)

Minor Changes

HTTPProxy CORS policy supports regex matching on Allowed Origins

The AllowOrigin field of the HTTPProxy CORSPolicy can be configured as a regex to enable more flexibility for users.
More advanced matching can now be performed on the Origin header of HTTP requests, instead of restricting users to allow all origins, or enumerating all possible values.

(#4710, @sunjayBhatia)

Other Changes

• Transition to default_source_code Lua filter field from deprecated inline_string field for specifying Lua scripts. (#4622, @sunjayBhatia)
• There are so many EnsureXDeleted in the sub-packages of objects , so unify them to objects/EnsureObjectDelete (#4630, @izturn)
• Transition to using new bootstrap field default_regex_engine instead of deprecated per-regex match engine selection. (#4652, @sunjayBhatia)
• Gateway Listeners with Secret references whose namespace is not covered by a ReferenceGrant should have their status reason set to RefNotPermitted. (#4664, @sunjayBhatia)
• Add a new flag leader-election-namespace for gateway-provisioner (#4669, @izturn)
• Add Contour log level configurability to ContourDeployment resource. (#4676, @izturn)
• Add Kubernetes client debug log level configurability to ContourDeployment resource. (#4677, @izturn)
• add the fields extraVolumes & extraVolumeMounts to crd/ContourDeployment to enable Envoy pods to mount additional volumes (#4680, @izturn)
• Add Kubernetes annotations configurability to ContourDeployment resource. to enable customize pod annotations for pod/envoy (#4681, @izturn)
• Add Kubernetes resource labels configurability to ContourDeployment resource. (#4709, @izturn)
• Add resource requirements configurability to ContourDeployment to enable resource quota for containers. (#4712, @izturn)
• Gateway API: status-only updates to resources no longer trigger DAG reprocessing and xDS updates. (#4744, @skriss)
• Gateway API: don't make status update calls to the API server if status has not changed on the resource. (#4745, @skriss)
• Updates to Gateway API v0.5.1. (#4755, @skriss)
• Update supported Kubernetes versions to 1.23, 1.24, and 1.25. (#4757, @sunjayBhatia)
• For Gateway API conformance, when a HTTP request matches multiple rules within a HTTPRoute, precedence is given to the rule that comes first in that HTTPRoute (in list-order). (#4763, @sunjayBhatia)
• Updates Go to 1.19.2, see release notes here. (#4773, @sunjayBhatia)
• Update Envoy to v1.24.0. See the Envoy release notes for more information. (#4804, @skriss)

Docs Changes

• Added guide for configuring gRPC routes. (#4725, @sunjayBhatia)

Deprecation and Removal Notices

Contour v1.20 minor release now out of support

As per Contour's support policy the v1.20 minor release will now no longer be patched for security or critical bug fixes.
Please upgrade to the v1.21 minor release or newer.

Installing and Upgrading

For a fresh install of Contour, consult the getting started documentation.

To upgrade an existing Contour installation, please consult the upgrade documentation.

Compatible Kubernetes Versions

Contour v1.23.0 is tested against Kubernetes 1.23 through 1.25.

Community Thanks!

We’re immensely grateful for all the community contributions that help make Contour even better! For this release, special thanks go out to the following contributors:

• @izturn

Are you a Contour user? We would love to know!

If you're using Contour and want to add your organization to our adopters list, please visit this page. If you prefer to keep your organization name anonymous but still give us feedback into your usage and scenarios for Contour, please post on this GitHub thread.