* kubectl port-forward now allows using resource name (e.g., deployment/www) to select a matching pod, as well as the use of --pod-running-timeout to wait until at least one pod is running. ([#59705](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59705), [@phsiao](https://github.com/phsiao))

#### New Deprecations

* As a reminder, etcd2 as a backend is deprecated and support will be removed in Kubernetes 1.13. Please ensure that your clusters are upgraded to etcd3 as soon as possible.

  `hostAliases` fields to mark the fields used as keys in those lists as either defaulted
  or required. ([#124553](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124553), [@pmalek](https://github.com/pmalek))

    * setting `KUBE_PROXY_DAEMONSET=true` in kube-up will now set a `node.kubernetes.io/kube-proxy-ds-ready=true` label on new nodes. In v1.16, the kube-proxy daemonset add-on will switch to using that label as a node selector.
    * In 1.16, the masq-agent daemonset add-on will switch to using `node.kubernetes.io/masq-agent-ds-ready` as a node selector.

- SourcesReady provides the readiness of kubelet configuration sources such as apiserver update readiness. ([#81344](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81344), [@zouyee](https://github.com/zouyee))

  * Caveat: The alpha version no longer supports, and...

- Enable external plugins can be used as subcommands for kubectl create command if subcommand does not exist as builtin only when KUBECTL_ENABLE_CMD_SHADOW environment variable is exported. ([#116293](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/116293), [@ardaguclu](https://github.com/ardaguclu))

      endpoint now gets broken when that endpoint becomes non-ready
      (rather than continuing until the endpoint is fully deleted).
  
    - Traffic to a service IP now starts getting rejected (as opposed to
      merely dropped) as soon as there are no longer any *usable*
      endpoints, rather than waiting until all of the terminating
      endpoints have terminated even when those terminating endpoints
      were not being used.
  

Cluster Lifecycle

SIG Cluster Lifecycle has been focusing on improving kubeadm in order to bring it to GA in a future release, as well as developing the [Cluster API](https://github.com/kubernetes/kube-deploy/tree/master/cluster-api). For kubeadm, most new features, such as support for CoreDNS, IPv6 and Dynamic Kubelet Configuration, have gone in as alpha features. We expect to graduate these features to beta and beyond in the next release. The initial Cluster API spec and GCE sample implementation...

- To enhance usability and developer experience, CRD validation rules now support direct use of (CEL) reserved keywords as field names in object validation expressions.