KIP-974 — Docker Image for GraalVM based Native Kafka Broker

Accepted Kafka 3.8 Broker

Introduces an experimental Docker image that packages a GraalVM ahead-of-time compiled Kafka broker binary, achieving sub-second startup (~110–140 ms) and ~250–540 MB RAM usage versus ~1150 ms and ~1 GB for the JVM image. Long JVM startup times and memory overhead slow down developer iteration cycles involving ephemeral broker instances in unit tests.

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