* Bug fixes

    * Fix some false negatives in detection of meaningful conflicts during strategic merge patch with maps and lists. ([#43469](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/43469), [@enisoc](https://github.com/enisoc))

the feature gate `ReduceDefaultCrashLoopBackOffDecay`. If you are also using the feature gate `KubeletCrashLoopBackOffMax` with a configured per-node `CrashLoopBackOff.MaxContainerRestartPeriod`, the effective kubelet configuration will follow the conflict resolution policy described further in the documentation [here](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod-lifecycle/#reduced-container-restart-delay). ([#130711](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/130711), [@lauralorenz](...

- client-go discovery clients constructed using `NewDiscoveryClientForConfig` or `NewDisco...

### Other (Cleanup or Flake)

- For apiserver_storage_size_bytes metric, we are renaming the label for etcd to be "storage_cluster_id" instead of "cluster" to to reduce conflict and be very specific. ([#124294](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124294), [@dims](https://github.com/dims)) [SIG API Machinery, Instrumentation and Testing]

## Dependencies

### Added

### Bug or Regression

- A bug was fixed where a job sync was not retried in case of a transient ResourceQuota conflict. ([#111026](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/111026), [@alculquicondor](https://github.com/alculquicondor))

- Kube-apiserver: fixed a conflict error encountered attempting to delete a pod with gracePeriodSeconds=0 and a resourceVersion precondition ([#85516](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/85516), [@michaelgugino](https://github.com/michaelgugino)) [SIG API Machinery]

- Updated the HPA controller so that it no longer emitted a `FailedRescale` event if a scale operation initially failed due to a conflict but succeeded after a retry; it now emitted a `SuccessfulRescale` event in this case. A `FailedRescale` event was still emitted if all retries were exhausted. ([#132007](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132007), [@AumPatel1](https:/...

- Kubelet: fixes a bug in the HostPort dockershim implementation that caused the conformance test "HostPort validates that there is no conflict between pods with same hostPort but different hostIP and protocol" to fail. ([#98755](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98755), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Cloud Provider, Network and Node]

  This bug causes the conformance test "HostPort validates that there is no conflict between pods with same hostPort but different hostIP and protocol" to fail. ([#98838](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98838), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea)) [SIG Network and Node]

### Bug or Regression

* Let service controller retry creating load balancer when persistUpdate failed due to conflict. ([#68087](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/68087), [@grayluck](https://github.com/grayluck))