- Fixed #118052: nodeAffinity on pods can change prior to scheduling gates being removed even when podSpec.affinity is nil in the initial spec, this matches the 1.28 behavior to allow consistent integrators to be written. ([#118199](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118199), [@aleskandro](https://github.com/aleskandro)) [SIG Apps, Scheduling and Testing]

- Prevent watch cache starvation by moving its watch to separate RPC and add a SeparateCacheWatchRPC feature flag to disable this behavior ([#123694](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123694), [@mengqiy](https://github.com/mengqiy)) [SIG API Machinery]

   - In version 1.8, enable this behavior by setting the
     `--horizontal-pod-autoscaler-use-rest-clients` flag to `true`.

   - In version 1.9, this behavior will be enabled by default, and must be explicitly
     disabled by setting the `--horizontal-pod-autoscaler-use-rest-clients` flag to `false`.

### Cluster Lifecycle

- The `auto-detect` behavior of the kubelet's `--cloud-provider` flag is deprecated.

   ([#122276](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/122276), [@pohly](https://github.com/pohly))

- Updated the CRI-O socket path, so users who configure kubelet to use a location like `/run/crio/crio.sock` don't see strange behaviour from CRI stats provider. ([#118704](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118704), [@dgl](https://github.com/dgl))

- The go version defined in `.go-version` is now fetched when invoking test, build, and code generation targets if the current go version does not match it. Set $FORCE_HOST_GO=y while testing or building to skip this behavior, or set $GO_VERSION to override the selected go version. ([#115496](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/115496), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt)) [SIG Release and Testing]

### Failing Test