- Added machine readable output options (JSON & YAML) to kubectl api-resources ([#132604](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/132604), [@dharmit](https://github.com/dharmit)) [SIG Apps, CLI and Network]

- github.com/gkampitakis/go-diff: [v1.3.2](https://github.com/gkampitakis/go-diff/tree/v1.3.2)
- github.com/gkampitakis/go-snaps: [v0.5.15](https://github.com/gkampitakis/go-snaps/tree/v0.5.15)
- github.com/goccy/go-yaml: [v1.18.0](https://github.com/goccy/go-yaml/tree/v1.18.0)
- github.com/joshdk/go-junit: [v1.0.0](https://github.com/joshdk/go-junit/tree/v1.0.0)
- github.com/maruel/natural: [v1.1.1](https://github.com/maruel/natural/tree/v1.1.1)

* Check for known manifests during preflight instead of only checking for non-empty manifests directory. This makes the preflight checks less heavy-handed by specifically checking for well-known files (kube-apiserver.yaml, kube-controller-manager.yaml, kube-scheduler.yaml, etcd.yaml) in /etc/kubernetes/manifests instead of simply checking for a non-empty directory. ([#57287](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/57287), [@mattkelly](https://github.com/mattkelly))

*   The Kubelet's feature gates are now specified as a map when provided via a JSON or YAML KubeletConfiguration, rather than as a string of key-value pairs, making them less awkward for users. ([#53025](https://github.com/kubernetes/k...

### Other notable changes

* Fix aggressive VM calls for Azure VMSS ([#83102](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83102), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

		* `kubectl version` has new flag --output (=json or yaml) allowing result of the command to be parsed in either json format or yaml. ([#39858](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/39858), [@alejandroEsc](https://github.com/alejandroEsc))


  * Bug fixes

- Kubeadm: fix a regression where the KubeletConfiguration is not properly downloaded during "kubeadm upgrade" commands from the kube-system/kubelet-config ConfigMap, resulting in the local '/var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml' file being written as a defaulted config. ([#124497](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124497), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

## Dependencies

### Added

- Fix unsafe JSON construction in a number of locations in the codebase ([#81158](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/81158), [@zouyee](https://github.com/zouyee))

* Fix aggressive VM calls for Azure VMSS ([#83102](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/83102), [@feiskyer](https://github.com/feiskyer))

    * Disable timestamp adjustment in logs to optimize performance.
    * Reduce logging agent buffer chunk limit to 512k to optimize performance.
* Fix a bug on GCE that /etc/crictl.yaml is not generated when crictl is preloaded. ([#66877](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/66877), [@Random-Liu](https://github.com/Random-Liu))