The Missing Talk About API Versioning & Evolution in Your Developer Pl... S. Schimanski, S. Urbaniak

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The Missing Talk About API Versioning & Evolution in Your Developer Platform - Stefan Schimanski, Upbound & Sergiusz Urbaniak, Independent

In the realm of developer platforms, individuals without extensive experience in the cloud-native ecosystem are now venturing into the creation of Kubernetes-based APIs. Tools like Crossplane are transforming every platform engineer into an API designer. Ten years in, the ecosystem still offers little guidance on Kubernetes versioning and API evolution in practice. A naive understanding is not helpful, and many have been burned by relying on intuition. This talk will provide deep, yet applicable knowledge, starting from the first principles of the invariants to maintain when changing APIs in Kubernetes. It will cover tools like schemas, conversion, validation, and admission, and present very concrete and directly applicable API Evolution Patterns. These patterns will help navigate the life cycle of CRD-based projects. This talk aims to educate on how to evolve APIs effectively and safely without inadvertently breaking users.