- kubeadm: increased the verbosity of API client dry-run actions during the subcommands "init", "join", "upgrade" and "reset". It also allowed dry-run on 'kubeadm join' even if there was no existing cluster by utilizing a faked, in-memory cluster-info ConfigMap. ([#126776](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/126776), [@neolit123](https:...

- Kubeadm: add the `--dry-run` flag to the `control-plane` phase of "kubeadm init". ([#102722](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102722), [@vinayakankugoyal](https://github.com/vinayakankugoyal))

*   kubectl `top node` now sorts by name and `top pod` sorts by namespace. Fixed a bug where results were inconsistently sorted. ([#53560](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/53560),[ @dixudx](https://github.com/dixudx))
*   Added --dry-run option to kubectl drain. ([#52440](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/52440),[ @juanvallejo](https://github.com/juanvallejo))

- Added error message "dry-run can not be used when --force is set" when dry-run and force flags are set in replace command. ([#110326](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/110326), [@ardaguclu](https://github.com/ardaguclu))

- Namespace is now included in the `--dry-run=client` output for `HorizontalPodAutoscaler (HPA)` objects. ([#134263](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/134263), [@ardaguclu](https://github.com/ardaguclu)) [SIG CLI and Testing]

- Fixed a bug where `kubectl apply --dry-run=client` would only output server state instead of merged manifest values when the resource already exists. ([#135513](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/135513), [@grandeit](https://github.com/grandeit)) [SIG CLI]

* Fixes a bug where dry-run is not honored for pod/eviction sub-resource. ([#76969](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76969), [@apelisse](https://github.com/apelisse))

* fix yaml decode issue ([#34297](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/34297), [@AdoHe](https://github.com/AdoHe))
* kubectl annotate now supports --dry-run ([#34199](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/34199), [@asalkeld](https://github.com/asalkeld))

    * `kubectl set selector` and `kubectl set subject` no longer print "running in local/dry-run mode..." at the top.  The output can now be piped and interpretted as yaml or json ([#46507](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/46507), [@bboreham](https://github.com/bboreham))

- Fixed a bug where dry-run is not honored for pod/eviction sub-resource. ([#76969](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/76969), [@apelisse](https://github.com/apelisse))