*   Best practice for version 1.9 and future versions is to explicitly set a cloud-provider. See [the documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/scratch/#cloud-providers)
*   The kubeadm `--skip-preflight-checks` flag is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

1. If this is your first time, please read our contributor guidelines: https://git.k8s.io/community/contributors/guide/first-contribution.md#your-first-contribution and developer guide https://git.k8s.io/community/contributors/devel/development.md#development-guide

The [Kubernetes community repo](https://github.com/kubernetes/community) contains information about how to get started, how the community organizes, and more.

## Sign the CLA

## Major Themes

Kubernetes is developed by community members whose work is organized into
[Special Interest Groups][]. For the 1.8 release, each SIG provides the
themes that guided their work.

[Special Interest Groups]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/sig-list.md

### SIG API Machinery

- Changed core_pattern on COS nodes to be an absolute path. ([#86329](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/86329), [@mml](https://github.com/mml)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle and Node]
- Client-go certificate manager rotation gained the ability to preserve optional intermediate chains accompanying issued certificates ([#88744](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/88744), [@jackkleeman](https://github.com/jackkleeman)) [SIG API Machinery and Auth]

* Start synchronizing pods after network is ready.  ([#68752](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/68752), [@krzysztof-jastrzebski](https://github.com/krzysztof-jastrzebski))
* kubectl has gained new --profile and --profile-output options to output go profiles ([#68681](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/68681), [@dlespiau](https://github.com/dlespiau))

* PodSecurityPolicy admission sets `podsecuritypolicy.admission.k8s.io/admit-policy` and `podsecuritypolicy.admission.k8s.io/validate-policy` annotations containing the name of the policy that allowed a pod to be admitted. (PodSecurityPolicy also gained the ability to [limit hostPath volume mounts to be read-only](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/policy/pod-security-policy/#volumes-and-file-systems).)

In addition, the NodeRestriction admission plugin now prevents kubelets from modifying...

- **Windows**
  - [alpha] Added support for Windows Server 2016 nodes and scheduling Windows Server Containers ([docs](http://kubernetes.io/docs/getting-started-guides/windows/)) ([kubernetes/features#116](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/116))

### Promoted Server Side Unknown Field Validation to Beta

- Kubeadm: remove the deprecated "kubeadm alpha kubelet config enable-dynamic" command. To continue using the feature please defer to the guide for "Dynamic Kubelet Configuration" at k8s.io. This change also removes the parent...