* Deprecate auto detecting cloud providers in kubelet. Auto detecting cloud providers go against the initiative for out-of-tree cloud providers as we'll now depend on cAdvisor integrations with cloud providers instead of the core repo. In the near future, `--cloud-provider` for kubelet will either be an empty string or `external`.  ([#51312](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51312), [@and...

* Deprecate auto detecting cloud providers in kubelet. Auto detecting cloud providers go against the initiative for out-of-tree cloud providers as we'll now depend on cAdvisor integrations with cloud providers instead of the core repo. In the near future, `--cloud-provider` for kubelet will either be an empty string or `external`.  ([#51312](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/51312), [@and...

- The kubelet, when using `--cloud-provider=external` can use the `--node-ip` flag with one of the unspecified addresses 0.0.0.0 or ::, to create the Node with the IP of the default gateway of the corresponding IP family and then delegating the responsibility to the external cloud provider. This solves the bootstrap problems of out of tree cloud providers that are deployed as Pods within the cluster. ([#125337](https://github.com/kubernetes/k...

      - [Application Deployment](#application-deployment-1)
      - [Cluster Autoscaling](#cluster-autoscaling)
      - [Cloud Provider Enhancement](#cloud-provider-enhancement)
      - [Cluster Provisioning](#cluster-provisioning)
      - [Cluster federation](#cluster-federation-1)
      - [Credential provider](#credential-provider)

### SIG Cloud Provider

- Fix: set nil cache entry based on old cache ([#87593](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/87593), [@aramase](https://github.com/aramase)) [SIG Cloud Provider]

- Updated the `v1` credential provider configuration to include the `tokenAttributes.cacheType` field. This field is required and must be set to either `ServiceAccount` or `Token` when configuring a provider that uses a service account to fetch registry credentials. ([#132617](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132617),...

- Fix: do not delete the lb that does not exist (#105777, @nilo19) [SIG Cloud Provider]
- Fix: ignore not a VMSS error for VMAS nodes in EnsureBackendPoolDeleted. (#105185, @ialidzhikov) [SIG Cloud Provider]
- Fix: leave the probe path empty for TCP probes (#105253, @nilo19) [SIG Cloud Provider]

- The in-tree cloud provider for vSphere has been deprecated and removed. Users are advised to utilize the external cloud provider and CSI driver available at https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-vsphere. ([#122937](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122937), [@dims](https://github.com/dims))...

### OpenStack

SIG-OpenStack updated the OpenStack provider to use newer APIs, consolidated community code into one repository, engaged with the Cloud Provider Working Group to have a consistent plan for moving provider code into individual repositories, improved testing of provider code, and strengthened ties with the OpenStack developer community.

### API-machinery