karpenter-aws v1.12.1 vs karpenter v1.12.1

[aslatter]

Does the v1.12.1 karpenter helm-chart and versions referenced here (https://karpenter.sh/docs/getting-started/getting-started-with-karpenter/#4-install-karpenter) also include the bug-fixes in the Karpenter v1.12.1 release here (https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/karpenter/releases/tag/v1.12.1).

I'm pretty sure the answer is "no" because the helm-chart is 20 days old, and the "Karpenter" v1.12.1 release was 3 days ago, but I had thought the version-numbers had previously been in-sync so it's a bit confusing.

[sueun-dev]

I don't think the AWS chart 1.12.1 includes the later kubernetes-sigs/karpenter v1.12.1 fixes.

The packaged OCI chart public.ecr.aws/karpenter/karpenter:1.12.1 does install controller image tag 1.12.1, but that is the aws/karpenter-provider-aws release from 2026-05-11. In that tag, go.mod still has sigs.k8s.io/karpenter v1.12.0; the separate kubernetes-sigs/karpenter v1.12.1 release was published later on 2026-05-28.

So yeah, the matching version string is a little misleading here. I'd treat those upstream bugfixes as not included until there is a newer aws/karpenter-provider-aws release/tag that bumps the sigs.k8s.io/karpenter dependency.