This has gone unnoticed since 1.15 where we thought we'd fixed it
Chunk/Cube generation stops in a specific location after increasing render distance.

To reproduce:

1. Set render distance to something low (6)
2. join or create a world, let it load around you
3. increase your render distance to something higher (12)
4. fly in a direction for a short while

How do you download/compile for 1.17?

You don't.

why tho? I just want to test it in 1.17

I mean, you can build it yourself, but we're not gonna be providing support for a heavily in-dev version that isn't playable yet. Building it shouldn't be any different than building any other mod though.

gradlew build fails tho

It is also missing a version number

This may be fixed now. Is this actually still an issue?

Tested latest MC_1.17 as of now 3be75eb
This exact issue is now gone, now another similar issue is shown, upon doing the same steps client (even on internal server) is not sent the chunks in the newly loaded region. I have only gotten this to work for larger differences in render distance (6->17) and most consistently on loading into a new world.
Several minutes of waiting and the chunks do not load, F3-A and placing blocks inside them also no change. Server has them as I'm getting server collision checking

Is it possible to find exact steps to reproduce the issue? (teleport to a given position, save and exit, load the world, go to a different position, chunks at that position not loading)

yes the original issue message says how to do so, though I found more success going from 6h to 17h view distances in my more recent testing