- kubeadm: ensured that a variety of API server requests were retried during "init", "join", "upgrade", "reset" workflows. Prior to this change, some API server requests, such as creating or updating ConfigMaps, were "one-shot" - i.e., they could fail if the API server dropped connectivity for a very short period of time.
   ([#123271](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/123271), [@neolit123](https://github.com/neolit123))

remained in alpha ever since due to performance and correctness issues inherent in its design. This PR exposes a second, independent pruning alpha powered by a new standard named `ApplySets`. An `ApplySet` is a server-side object (by default, a Secret; ConfigMaps are also allowed) that kubectl can use to accurately and efficiently track set membership across `apply` operations. The format used for `ApplySet` is set out in  [KEP 3659](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/3659) as a low-level...

* GCE: A role and clusterrole will now be provided with GCE/GKE for allowing the cloud-provider to post warning events on all services and watching configmaps in the kube-system namespace. No user action is required. ([#59686](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/59686), [@nicksardo](https://github.com/nicksardo))

- Always create configmaps/extensions-apiserver-authentication from kube-apiserver. ([#67694](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/67694), [@sttts](https://github.com/sttts))

- Don't prematurely close reflectors in case of slow initialization in watch based manager to fix issues with inability to properly mount secrets/configmaps. ([#104604](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/104604), [@wojtek-t](https://github.com/wojtek-t))

- Fixes the `should receive events on concurrent watches in same order` conformance test to work properly on clusters that auto-create additional configmaps in namespaces. ([#101950](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/101950), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt))

### Failing Test

- Fixes the `should receive events on concurrent watches in same order` conformance test to work properly on clusters that auto-create additional configmaps in namespaces ([#101950](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/101950), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt)) [SIG API Machinery and Testing]

### Bug or Regression