Vitess 6 GA PR

content/en/blog/2020-04-29-announcing-vitess-6.md

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+---
+author: 'Morgan Tocker'
+date: 2020-04-29T08:00:21-07:00
+slug: '2020-04-29-announcing-vitess-6'
+tags: ['Guides']
+title: 'Announcing Vitess 6'
+---
+
+I am excited to announce the general availability of Vitess 6, the second release to follow our [new accelerated release schedule](https://github.com/vitessio/enhancements/blob/master/veps/vep-1.md).
+
+While only 12 weeks have elapsed since the previous release, it feels like a few key investments have started to pay dividends all at once. To provide some personal highlights:
+
+### Improved SQL Support
+Vitess now understands much more of MySQL’s syntax. We have taken the approach of studying the queries issued by common applications and frameworks, and baking them right into the end-to-end test suite.
+
+Common issues such as `SHOW` commands not returning correct results or MySQL’s `SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS` feature have now been fixed. In Vitess 7, we plan to add support for setting session variables, which will address one of the largest outstanding compatibility issues.
+
+### Kubernetes Topology Service
+The Helm charts now default to using Kubernetes as the [Topology Service](https://vitess.io/docs/concepts/topology-service/). This helps remove a dependency on etcd-operator, which has since been [discontinued](https://github.com/coreos/etcd-operator/pull/2169).
+
+This change also unlocked the adoption of Helm 3 and support for a wider range of Kubernetes versions, making installing Vitess much easier.
+
+### General Availability of VReplication-based Workflows
+While VReplication made its appearance in Vitess 4, it has now been promoted from experimental to general availability and the documentation now points to [MoveTables](https://vitess.io/docs/user-guides/move-tables/) and [Resharding](https://vitess.io/docs/user-guides/resharding/).
+
+These workflows require significantly fewer steps than their predecessors (Vertical Split Clone and Horizontal Sharding), of which we intend to deprecate at some point in the future.
+
+--
+
+In addition to this, the end-to-end testsuite is now [fully migrated to Golang](https://www.planetscale.com/blog/planetscale-migrates-open-source-vitess-test-suite-from-python-to-go), and we’ve improved the health of the code base by removing a lot of legacy code specific to Statement-Based Replication and “V2” query routing.
+
+There is a slightly higher number of incompatible changes than in prior releases, so we encourage you to spend a moment reading the [release notes](https://github.com/vitessio/vitess/releases/tag/v6.0.20-20200429).
+
+Please download Vitess 6, and take it for a spin!
+