●Change8

edge-25.3.4

Breaking Changes
📦 linkerd
⚠ 1 breaking✨ 8 features🐛 2 fixes⚡ 1 deprecations🔧 5 symbols

Summary

This release introduces mandatory Gateway API CRD installation, deprecates old multicluster commands in favor of `link-gen`, and restores IPv6 support. This version is explicitly marked as NOT RECOMMENDED.

⚠️ Breaking Changes

  • Linkerd now requires the Gateway API CRDs to be installed before installation. To fix this, either install the Gateway API CRDs manually before installing Linkerd, or set `installGatewayAPI=true` during installation (note: a CLI bug in this release prevents the CLI from installing them automatically).

Migration Steps

  1. If installing Linkerd for the first time, ensure the Gateway API CRDs are installed on the cluster beforehand, or set `installGatewayAPI=true` during installation.
  2. When performing multicluster operations, use `linkerd multicluster link-gen` instead of the deprecated `link` or `unlink` commands.

✨ New Features

  • Restored correct IPv6 support.
  • Restored Role permissions for the multicluster mirror controller.
  • Introduced the new `linkerd multicluster link-gen` command for multicluster operations.
  • Added CLI check to warn about older mirror controllers that haven't been replaced.
  • Supports setting `proxy.metrics.hostnameLabels` to true during installation to include hostname labels in outbound metrics.
  • Supports excluding labels and annotations from federated and mirrored services.
  • Mitigated a thundering herd effect where proxies could unnecessarily load the DNS server.
  • Added support for ExternalWorkloads that do not explicitly declare the Linkerd proxy port (4143) in their manifests.

🐛 Bug Fixes

  • Fixed a bug that could result in stale Service resources when mirroring services.
  • `linkerd viz tap` no longer relies on the obsolete `authority` pseudo-resource.

🔧 Affected Symbols

linkerd multicluster link-genlinkunlinklinkerd viz tapauthority

⚡ Deprecations

  • The `link` and `unlink` multicluster CLI commands are deprecated in favor of the new `linkerd multicluster link-gen` command.