We are proud to announce that [external-secrets-operator](https://external-secrets.io) is now officially GA! We just released version [v1.0.0](https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/release...).
This version is full of fixes and a couple of new features, however, the point is to go stable. Now, with v1.0.0 we can follow the semver guidelines in breaking changes and patch and minor releases. Hopefully, this provides users and organizations the confidence to invest into ESO and to invest into keeping it up and running. Does this mean the project is on maintenance? No! We are working today to improve ESO in a lot of ways.
One that has been highly requested for a while now and much anticipated. Generic target types for ExternalSecrets (ES) objects. ES objects are now able to create whatever object you want, not just Secrets. ConfigMaps, Deployments, Applications, etc. Anything goes as long as you configure the right RBAC settings. Please read the usage page carefully and note that this feature is in heavy _alpha_. Link to the documentation can be found [here](https://external-secrets.io/latest/guides/targeting-custom-r...).
We are also working hard on [Out-Of-Process](https://github.com/external-secrets/external-secrets/pull/55...) providers. One of the changes involved in that effort is introducing go modules for all providers. This means that eventually, people will be able to build their own ESO binary with _only_ selected provider(s). This will prevent other providers bleeding in their vulnerabilities into your provider. If you would like to have an ESO that only supports AWS you could build it with `go build -tag provider-aws` or something similar. We wanted to make sure these changes are understood by the community as the future of ESO - thus, nothing will change for the current APIs (SecretStores; ExternalSecrets). Expect this to be the v2 version of it ;)
Does this mean all `1.x` versions will be supported? While ESO is on 1.0 - our support policy did not change. We only support the latest minor version (1.x) currently released. Today, that will be 1.0.
How can I upgrade? The upgrade is instant from 0.20.x. There are no expected breaking changes as a part of this update .
Now to organizational things. We also changed our community meeting hours. We will have alternating times where once the meeting is at the same current time it is right now, but the other will be at UTC 21:00. Making sure that people from different continents might be also able to join our community meetings.
Thank you so much for everyone involved in this release and for all our supporters. Without you, this would not have been possible.
Gergely(Skarlso)
