2020 — the census

56 posts, 2020-01-08 to 2020-12-21. Seven percent of the corpus and 8% more posts than 2019, only the second expansion the sweep has measured. Kubernetes 1.15 through 1.20 are in scope, three of them shipped inside the year. This is the year the archive stopped only aging and started arguing with itself: a post that promises something the project later reversed, and a post edited to strike a sentence out rather than correct it — see the method.

Yield: 9 walk, one above the floor of the 8–15 band. 23 read, 1 dated, 23 skip.

The best find in the year is a promise the project broke. Scaling Kubernetes Networking With EndpointSlices says it twice and in as many words: the Endpoints API "will continue to be considered generally available and stable", and "The Endpoints API is not going away." At the pin the API reference for that object opens "Deprecated: This API is deprecated in v1.33+. Use discoveryv1.EndpointSlice." Every staleness the census has recorded so far is a post overtaken by a decision taken after it was written. This is different in kind: the post makes a forecast, on the project's own blog, about the project's own plans, and the project went the other way. The rubric has a verdict for a post that has aged and one for a post that was wrong when it was published; it has no name for a post that was right at publication and was made wrong by the people who published it.

The second is the archive editing itself in public. 2019 gave the first later-added editorial note attached to a post. 2020 goes further twice over. Don't Panic: Kubernetes and Docker — the most-read thing the project has ever published — contains a sentence with a clause struck through inside the body: removal is "currently planned for the 1.22 release in late 2021", the whole clause wrapped in <del>. It went in v1.24. Its companion Dockershim Deprecation FAQ carries an inline "Update: removal of dockershim is scheduled for Kubernetes v1.24" over an original that named no release at all. A note beside a post says this has aged. A strikethrough inside a post says we said this and we were wrong, and leaves the wrong thing legible underneath.

Third: the ladder, broken in both directions, in the year the project wrote the ladder down. Moving Forward From Beta explains the alpha → beta → stable progression and states flatly that "beta features are enabled by default"; the pin has softened that to "Usually enabled by default, well-tested", because new beta APIs stopped being on by default in v1.24. Six weeks earlier Warning: Helpful Warnings Ahead shipped a feature gate that has no alpha stage at all — WarningHeaders starts at beta, default-true, in 1.19. Two weeks after that, Introducing Structured Logs announced JSON log output as alpha in 1.19, and it is still marked alpha for v1.19 in the pinned docs — six years stationary, while the klog flags the post writes against were deprecated in v1.23 and removed in v1.26 underneath it. One feature skipped a rung, one never climbed one, and both are in the same quarter as the post explaining what the rungs mean.

And the year's headline event earns no walk. Dockershim deprecation is the biggest Kubernetes story of 2020 and both of its posts are read. Nothing in either breaks a manifest: the diff is a date, a strikethrough, and a migration path that survives intact — migrating-from-dockershim is six pages at the pin and cri-dockerd is documented as the supported way to keep the daemon. The walk machinery detects manifests that stop applying and commands that stop existing, and the defining change of the year is neither. It shows in the tallies: nodes takes 4 rows and zero walks, the first year in the sweep where it earns none.

dated earns one row. Deploying External OpenStack Cloud Provider with Kubeadm passes both tests: fifty code fences of genuine bring-up — project, network, router, floating IPs, security groups, kubeadm on CentOS, then the out-of-tree provider and Cinder CSI — that needs an OpenStack cloud underneath before the first command runs. That is not a RAM problem the 9.5GB ceiling can be argued around, it is a second infrastructure layer. The verdict is now at 11 rows in 419.

The 23 rejects are three release announcements, two memorials, twelve community-and-contributor posts, and six vendor or ecosystem posts recording no decision. At 41% the reject rate turns up for the first time since 2018: 48%, 42%, 38%, 40%, 37%, 41%. meta takes 21 rows and 38%, its highest share since 2015, and the blog's centre of gravity in a pandemic year is visibly the project talking about itself.

Three things in the topic tallies are worth the taxonomy's attention. ecosystem collapses to 3 rows and 5%, its lowest share of any year censused — 21%, 28%, 14%, 12%, now 5% — which is the vendor genre draining out of the blog rather than the vendor rule working harder. obs returns from the empty column 2019 left, with 3 rows and the first observability walk since 2016. And history is empty for the first time, alongside etcd: in a year with three releases and a runtime deprecation, nobody wrote about where any of it came from.

Census

Verdicts and topics are defined in ../README.md. Every post has a row, and a row's title always links the post — never the exercise file, so the row never changes once written. The Exercises table below is the progress record.

post	date	k8s	verdict	topic	why
Testing of CSI drivers	01-08	—	read	tooling	Reusing the in-tree storage test suites and csi-sanity against a third-party driver, and the sequel to 2019's E2E Testing for Everyone. Go development against a driver you already have, not cluster work.
Remembering Brad Childs	01-10	—	skip	meta	A memorial for a SIG Storage chair.
Announcing the Kubernetes bug bounty program	01-14	—	read	security	The bug bounty launch, and the only place in the archive where the project writes down what it considers its own attack surface — the in-scope and out-of-scope lists are a trust boundary stated out loud. No technique in it.
Kubernetes on MIPS	01-15	—	read	nodes	A MIPS port carried by cross-compilation under QEMU, with a component table pinning hyperkube v1.14.3 from a vendor registry. hyperkube was itself discontinued after v1.18 and survives at the pin only as three incidental mentions, so the artefact the port is built around outlived neither the architecture nor the release.
CSI Ephemeral Inline Volumes	01-21	1.16	read	storage	Inline volumes served straight by a CSI driver, with volumeLifecycleModes on CSIDriver. Superseded inside its own year by the generic-ephemeral post seven months later, which does the same job with any storage class; the CSIInlineVolume gate went stable in 1.25 and is removed: true at the pin.
Reviewing 2019 in Docs	01-21	—	skip	meta	SIG Docs year in review.
KubeInvaders - Gamified Chaos Engineering Tool for Kubernetes	01-22	—	skip	ecosystem	A chaos tool that renders Pods as Space Invaders. Fun, no decision.
Deploying External OpenStack Cloud Provider with Kubeadm	02-07	1.15	dated	tooling	Both dated tests hold. It is a full bring-up — OpenStack project, network, router, floating IPs, security groups, kubeadm on CentOS, then the out-of-tree cloud provider and Cinder CSI — 50 code fences of it, and it needs an OpenStack cloud underneath before the first command runs. That is not a RAM problem the 9.5GB ceiling can be argued around; it is a second infrastructure layer.
Contributor Summit Amsterdam Schedule Announced	02-18	—	skip	meta	Summit schedule.
Bring your ideas to the world with kubectl plugins	02-28	—	read	tooling	Writing a kubectl plugin instead of patching kubectl, with the KEP-and-review cost of the alternative spelled out as the reason. The plugin mechanism and Krew both survive at the pin unchanged, so there is no diff to walk.
Contributor Summit Amsterdam Postponed	03-04	—	skip	meta	Summit postponed.
Kong Ingress Controller and Service Mesh: Setting up Ingress to Istio on Kubernetes	03-18	—	skip	ecosystem	A vendor ingress controller in front of a service mesh. Product capabilities, no decision.
Join SIG Scalability and Learn Kubernetes the Hard Way	03-19	—	skip	meta	A recruiting post for SIG Scalability.
Kubernetes 1.18: Fit & Finish	03-25	1.18	skip	meta	Release announcement.
Kubernetes 1.18 Feature Server-side Apply Beta 2	04-01	1.18	walk	api	A beta that shipped twice. The post's own explanation — Server-side Apply "has been Beta since 1.16, but it didn't track the owner for fields associated with objects that had not been applied" — describes a beta reissued because the first one did not do the thing it was for. The ServerSideApply gate reads beta 1.16–1.21, stable 1.22, removed: true at the pin. kubectl apply --server-side and --force-conflicts survive; what does not is the post's premise that you can go and look at managedFields, which kubectl get -o yaml has hidden behind --show-managed-fields ever since it grew too noisy to print.
Kubernetes Topology Manager Moves to Beta - Align Up!	04-01	1.18	read	nodes	The best hardware-topology explanation in the archive — NUMA, TopologyHints, HintProviders, Policy.Merge — and it fails dated's first test: it is a design document with thirty-two fenced blocks of Go and policy tables, not a walkthrough. dated is for a walkthrough the lab cannot run; a post that needs a two-socket machine but never asks you to run anything is a read. The gate went stable in 1.27 and is removed: true.
Improvements to the Ingress API in Kubernetes 1.18	04-02	1.18	walk	net	pathType arrives here as an optional field defaulting to ImplementationSpecific. At the pin: "Paths that do not include an explicit pathType will fail validation" — an optional field with a default became mandatory with none. Both of the post's manifests are networking.k8s.io/v1beta1, unserved since v1.22, and the kubernetes.io/ingress.class annotation the IngressClass resource replaces is "officially deprecated" while controllers are still told to honour it. Three separate ways for the same file to fail.
Introducing Windows CSI support alpha for Kubernetes	04-03	1.18	read	storage	CSI drivers on Windows nodes via a privileged proxy. Alpha, announcement-shaped, and the lab is Linux.
API Priority and Fairness Alpha	04-06	1.18	walk	api	The most churned API in the archive. The post has you set --runtime-config="flowcontrol.apiserver.k8s.io/v1alpha1=true" and --feature-gates=APIPriorityAndFairness=true; at the pin the gate went stable in 1.29 and is removed: true, and that group has since been served and unserved four times over — v1beta1 stopped at v1.26, v1beta2 at v1.29, v1beta3 at v1.32, with v1 since v1.29 and assuredConcurrencyShares renamed to nominalConcurrencyShares on the way. Meanwhile kubectl get flowschemas needs no flags at all now.
Cluster API v1alpha3 Delivers New Features and an Improved User Experience	04-21	—	read	tooling	Cluster API at v1alpha3, with the machine-health-checking and control-plane provider design that survived. The project is now at v1beta1, so every manifest in the post is unserved, and running it needs a management cluster plus an infrastructure provider.
How Kubernetes contributors are building a better communication process	04-21	—	skip	meta	How the contributor community organises its own communication.
Two-phased Canary Rollout with Open Source Gloo	04-22	—	skip	ecosystem	A vendor gateway's canary workflow.
Introducing PodTopologySpread	05-05	1.18	walk	sched	topologySpreadConstraints is still exactly as the post prints it, and everything around it moved. The scheduler config the post configures defaults with is kubescheduler.config.k8s.io/v1alpha2, a version the pinned docs no longer mention at all — v1 accounts for 27 of the 31 occurrences left. Both gates are gone: EvenPodsSpread stable at 1.19, DefaultPodTopologySpread stable at 1.24, both removed: true. Three nodes and two labels reproduce the whole thing.
How Docs Handle Third Party and Dual Sourced Content	05-06	—	skip	meta	The docs policy on third-party content.
WSL+Docker: Kubernetes on the Windows Desktop	05-21	—	read	tooling	KinD and Minikube under WSL2 on a Windows desktop, and Docker Desktop's licence has changed underneath it since. The lab builds real multi-node clusters, so the local-cluster ground is covered twice over already.
An Introduction to the K8s-Infrastructure Working Group	05-27	—	skip	meta	An introduction to the infrastructure working group.
My exciting journey into Kubernetes’ history	05-28	—	read	meta	Ninety thousand issues and pull requests put through Kubeflow and TensorFlow to predict PR labels. A genuine end-to-end build, but what it teaches is data science; Kubernetes is the substrate, not the subject.
K8s KPIs with Kuberhealthy	05-29	—	skip	obs	A synthetic-monitoring operator's release update. Names no alternative it rejected.
Supporting the Evolving Ingress Specification in Kubernetes 1.18	06-05	1.18	read	net	A vendor's migration guide for the same 1.18 Ingress changes the API post above walks, written from the controller side. Read for what a spec change costs the implementers; the diff itself is carried first-party.
A Better Docs UX With Docsy	06-15	—	skip	meta	The website changes theme.
Working with Terraform and Kubernetes	06-29	—	read	tooling	Terraform for the cluster, Kustomize for what runs on it, with the Terraform Kubernetes provider named as the thing rejected and why. A decision with its alternative on the record, so it clears the vendor bar as a read.
SIG-Windows Spotlight	06-30	—	skip	meta	A SIG spotlight interview about how the group works.
Music and math: the Kubernetes 1.17 release interview	07-27	1.17	read	meta	The 1.17 release lead on the release. read on the maintainer-interview rule, as with 2019's two.
Physics, politics and Pull Requests: the Kubernetes 1.18 release interview	08-03	1.18	read	meta	The 1.18 release lead, on a release that a bug in k8s.io/utils delayed by a day.
Introducing Hierarchical Namespaces	08-14	—	read	security	Hierarchical namespaces, proposed as the answer to multi-tenancy that RBAC and NetworkPolicy leave half-solved. At the pin the phrase "hierarchical namespace" and the hnc.x-k8s.io API group both return zero hits in the docs: it stayed a kubernetes-sigs project and never entered the thing it was designed to extend. Read for the tenancy argument, which is still the live one.
Moving Forward From Beta	08-21	1.20	read	api	The project writing down its own ladder, and the post the census's beta-graduation rule is arguing with. It states flatly that "beta features are enabled by default"; the pin has softened that to "Usually enabled by default, well-tested" and new beta APIs have been off by default since v1.24. No commands in it, so the diff is a sentence rather than a manifest.
Kubernetes 1.19: Accentuate the Paw-sitive	08-26	1.19	skip	meta	Release announcement.
Increasing the Kubernetes Support Window to One Year	08-31	1.19	skip	meta	The support window goes from nine months to one year, on survey evidence. A schedule change with no surface a cluster can show you.
Ephemeral volumes with storage capacity tracking: EmptyDir on steroids	09-01	1.19	walk	storage	ephemeral.volumeClaimTemplate gives a Pod a full PVC that dies with it — one manifest, any storage class, and the lab's provisioner is enough. The GenericEphemeralVolume gate went stable at 1.23 and is removed: true, and the capacity-tracking half moved group-version: storage.k8s.io/v1beta1 CSIStorageCapacity stopped being served at v1.27. The post's own demonstration clones intel/pmem-csi and needs persistent memory, so the walk is the feature, not the tour.
Scaling Kubernetes Networking With EndpointSlices	09-02	1.19	walk	net	The post makes a promise and the project broke it. "The Endpoints API will continue to be considered generally available and stable", it says, and "The Endpoints API is not going away"; at the pin the API reference reads "Deprecated: This API is deprecated in v1.33+. Use discoveryv1.EndpointSlice." Its own API moved too — discovery.k8s.io/v1beta1 unserved since v1.25, and the per-endpoint topology map it describes is now deprecatedTopology and not writable, replaced by zone and nodeName. One Service with a handful of Pods shows both objects side by side.
Warning: Helpful Warnings Ahead	09-03	1.19	walk	api	A feature that has no alpha stage: the WarningHeaders gate starts at beta and default-true in 1.19, stable 1.22, removed: true — the only ladder in the year that skips a rung. The post's worked example is a kubectl apply printing "networking.k8s.io/v1beta1 Ingress is deprecated in v1.19+, unavailable in v1.22+", which at the pin is not a warning any more but a hard failure, so the demonstration has been overtaken by the thing it demonstrates. --warnings-as-errors and CRD deprecationWarning both survive.
Introducing Structured Logs	09-04	1.19	walk	obs	Six years and it never left alpha. The pinned docs still mark JSON log format {{< feature-state for_k8s_version="v1.19" state="alpha" >}} — the release this post announces — while --logging-format sits on all five components defaulting to text. Underneath it the klog surface the post writes against was cut: eleven flags including --log-file, --logtostderr and --alsologtostderr deprecated at v1.23 and removed at v1.26, with kube-log-runner handed the job instead. The year's only obs walk, and the tag's first since the taxonomy was frozen.
GSoC 2020 - Building operators for cluster addons	09-16	—	read	tooling	A Google Summer of Code report, and the declarative addon-operator pattern inside it is the payload rather than the programme framing. Read for how an addon becomes a controller.
Contributing to the Development Guide	10-01	—	skip	meta	A technical writer's account of updating the development guide.
Announcing the 2020 Steering Committee Election Results	10-12	—	skip	meta	Election results.
Remembering Dan Kohn	11-02	—	skip	meta	A memorial for the CNCF's first executive director.
Cloud native security for your clusters	11-18	—	skip	security	An announcement that a CNCF whitepaper exists.
Dockershim Deprecation FAQ	12-02	1.20	read	nodes	The FAQ half of the dockershim deprecation, and it has been edited in place — "Update: removal of dockershim is scheduled for Kubernetes v1.24" sits inside the body, over an original that named no release. Its migration path survived: migrating-from-dockershim is six pages at the pin and cri-dockerd is documented as the way to keep the daemon.
Don't Panic: Kubernetes and Docker	12-02	1.20	read	nodes	The most-read post the project ever published, and the one place in the archive where a sentence has been struck through rather than corrected: "removed in a future release (<del>currently planned for the 1.22 release in late 2021</del>)". It went in v1.24. Nothing here breaks a manifest — the diff is a date and a strikethrough — so the year's biggest story is a read, not a walk.
GSoD 2020: Improving the API Reference Experience	12-04	—	skip	meta	A Season of Docs report on the API reference generator.
Kubernetes 1.20: The Raddest Release	12-08	1.20	skip	meta	Release announcement.
Kubernetes 1.20: Kubernetes Volume Snapshot Moves to GA	12-10	1.20	read	storage	Snapshots reach GA, four years and two alphas after the 2018 post the census already walks. The ladder ran alpha 1.12, second alpha with breaking changes 1.13, beta 1.17, GA 1.20, and the interesting rung is the one 2019 already recorded.
Kubernetes 1.20: Granular Control of Volume Permission Changes	12-14	1.20	walk	storage	The cheapest observable failure in the year: mount a volume with many files, set fsGroup, and watch the Pod sit in ContainerCreating while the kubelet recursively chowns every one of them. fsGroupChangePolicy: "OnRootMismatch" makes it instant. Both gates are stable-and-removed: true and both fields survive verbatim, so this is a walk on the second clause alone — plus one thing the post predates: the pin now warns that the policy has no effect once a CSI driver has been delegated the job.
Third Party Device Metrics Reaches GA	12-16	1.20	read	obs	The Pod Resources API at GA and kubelet's own accelerator metrics turned off in favour of it. The plugin architecture is the point and the devices are the prerequisite.
Kubernetes 1.20: Pod Impersonation and Short-lived Volumes in CSI Drivers	12-18	1.20	read	storage	Service-account tokens handed to CSI drivers so a driver stops needing the TokenRequest permission or the host filesystem. A least-privilege argument worth reading; acting on it means writing a driver.
A Custom Kubernetes Scheduler to Orchestrate Highly Available Applications	12-21	—	read	sched	A vendor writes a second scheduler to keep a distributed database's replicas apart, having found anti-affinity and StatefulSet ordering insufficient — the alternatives are named, which is what the vendor rule asks for. The scheduler framework has since made most of this an out-of-tree plugin rather than a second binary.

Exercises

Nine walk verdicts, numbered in publication order. All nine are written. The rubric they are authored against was ratified in #57.

#	exercise	state
01	The limitation the page needs to be false	written
02	The field that stopped being optional	written
03	The alpha that was three releases old	written
04	The constraint survived, the config did not	written
05	A claim that dies with the Pod	written
06	The promise that held, and the one that did not	written
07	The post the reference pages cite	written
08	The format the flag tables never learned	written
09	The values the reference points at and does not list	written