### Feature

- 'kubeadm: enhanced the "patches" functionality to be able to patch coredns
  deployment. The new patch target is called "corednsdeployment" (e.g. patch file
  "corednsdeployment+json.json"). This makes it possible to apply custom patches
  to coredns deployment during "init" and "upgrade".' ([#124820](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/124820), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

👆 🔜 👀 🕳 💖:

```JSON
{"item_id": 5, "q": "somequery"}
```

## 🎓 🛠️ 🩺

- Fix how nulls are handled in array and objects in [json patches](https://github.com/evanphx/json-patch). ([#102467](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/102467), [@pacoxu](https://github.com/pacoxu))

## Dependencies

### Added
_Nothing has changed._

### Changed
- github.com/evanphx/json-patch: [162e562 → v4.9.0+incompatible](https://github.com/evanphx/json-patch/compare/162e562...v4.9.0)

### Removed
- github.com/jessevdk/go-flags: [v1.4.0](https://github.com/jessevdk/go-flags/tree/v1.4.0)



# v1.16.14

- kube-controller-manager
  - The deprecated `--insecure-experimental-approve-all-kubelet-csrs-for-group` flag has been removed.
- kubelet
  - The deprecated `--google-json-key` flag has been removed. Remove the `--google-json-key` flag from kubelet invocations before upgrading. ([#69354](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/69354), [@yujuhong](https://github.com/yujuhong))

- github.com/go-ini/ini: [v1.67.0](https://github.com/go-ini/ini/tree/v1.67.0)
- github.com/gobwas/glob: [v0.2.3](https://github.com/gobwas/glob/tree/v0.2.3)
- github.com/goccy/go-json: [v0.10.2](https://github.com/goccy/go-json/tree/v0.10.2)
- github.com/google/go-containerregistry: [v0.20.1](https://github.com/google/go-containerregistry/tree/v0.20.1)
- github.com/gorilla/mux: [v1.8.1](https://github.com/gorilla/mux/tree/v1.8.1)

* Removed comments in json config when using kubectl edit with -o json ([#31685](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/31685), [@jellonek](https://github.com/jellonek))

* kubectl get -o jsonpath=... will now throw an error if the path is to a field not present in the json, even if the path is for a field valid for the type.  This is a change from the pre-1.5 behavior, which would return the default value for some fields even if they were not present in the json. ([#37991](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/37991), [@pwittrock](https://github.com/pwittrock))

API fields previously capable of storing and returning either `[]` and `null` via JSON API requests (for example, the Endpoints `subsets` field)
can now store only `null` when created using the protobuf content-type or stored in etcd using protobuf serialization (the default in 1.6).

- the ability to rollback to etcd2 can be preserved by setting the storage media type flag on `kube-apiserver`

  ```
  --storage-media-type application/json
  ```

  to continue to use `application/json` as the storage media type which can be changed to
  `application/vnd.kubernetes.protobuf` at a later time.

## Major updates and release themes