API Changes

xds: Enable least request by default (#12062)
core: Delete the long-deprecated GRPC_PROXY_EXP env variable (#11988) (908f9f1). This was experimental and has been warning when used since v1.8.0. Use the Java-standard -Dhttps.proxyHost and -Dhttps.proxyPort instead
api: Remove deprecated SubchannelPicker.requestConnection() (f79ab2f). This API was replaced by LoadBalancer.requestConnection() in v1.22.0

Bug Fixes

config: prevents global stats config freeze in ConfiguratorRegistry.getConfigurators() (#11991) (d4c46a7)
xds: XdsDepManager should ignore updates after shutdown (25199e9). This fixes a source of java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "io.grpc.xds.XdsDependencyManager$RdsUpdateSupplier.getRdsUpdate()" because "routeSource" is null regression introduced in v1.72.0

Improvements

xds: listener type validation (#11933) (c8d1e6e)
xds: add the missing xds.authority metric defined in gRFC A78 (#12018) (6cd007d)

New Features

xds: float LRU cache across interceptors (#11992) (7a08fdb)
xds: propagate audience from cluster resource in gcp auth filter. This completes the gRFC A83, implementation of GCP Authentication Filter. (#11972) (84c7713)
opentelemetry: Implement grpc.lb.backend_service optional label (9619453). This completes the gRFC A89 implementation, which is enabled when requesting the new label

Documentation

api: Remove mention of "epoch" from Ticker.nanoTime() javadocs (84bd014)