* Implement graceful shutdown of the kube-apiserver by waiting for open connections to finish before exiting. Moreover, the audit backend will stop dropping events on shutdown. ([#53695](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/53695), [@hzxuzhonghu](https://github.com/hzxuzhonghu))

* Requests with the query parameter `?watch=` are treated by the API server as a request to watch, but authorization and metrics were not correctly identifying those as watch requests, instead grouping them as list calls. ([#48583](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/48583), [@smarterclayton](https://github.com/smarterclayton))

- Fixed a race condition in `kube-proxy` when using LocalModeNodeCIDR, to avoid dropping Services traffic if the object node is recreated when `kube-proxy` is starting. ([#118499](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118499), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea))

PodReady++ feature now has `kubectl` CLI support.

Progress was made towards finalizing the IPv6 dual stack support KEP and support for topological routing of services.

### SIG Node

  - warn - perform server-side validation and warn on any invalid fields (but ultimately let the request succeed by dropping any invalid fields from the object). If validation is not available on the server, perform no validation.
  - false/ignore - perform no validation, silently dropping invalid fields from the object. ([#108350](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/108350), [@kevindelgado](https://github.com/kevindelgado))

  for the service, but there is at least one Terminating pod for that service on the node,
  then kube-proxy will send the traffic to the Terminating pod rather than dropping it. This
  patches up a race condition between when a pod is killed and when the external load

- The metrics `etcd_request_duration_seconds` and `etcd_bookmark_counts` now differentiate by group resource instead of object type, allowing unique entries per `CustomResourceDefinition`, instead of grouping them all under `*unstructured.Unstructured`. ([#112042](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/112042), [@ncdc](https://github.com/ncdc))

- Improved memory usage of `kube-scheduler` by dropping the `.metadata.managedFields` field that `kube-scheduler` doesn't require. ([#119556](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/119556), [@linxiulei](https://github.com/linxiulei))

## Changelog since v1.7.5

### Other notable changes

* [fluentd-gcp addon] Fluentd will trim lines exceeding 100KB instead of dropping them. ([#52289](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52289), [@crassirostris](https://github.com/crassirostris))