Reject legacy client-go major tags in dependency updates #5813

🤖 Generated by the Agentic Engineer

Description

Renovate proposes the legacy k8s.io/client-go v11.0.0+incompatible tag as an upgrade to the modern v0.36/v0.37 client libraries. This creates a failing dependency PR and consumes validation capacity without advancing the Kubernetes client.

Steps to reproduce

1. Inspect fix(deps): update module k8s.io/client-go to v11 - autoclosed #5812 at 751f05e8b54a9715e40ae70e8f35a790ca0707ea: six go.mod files replace v0.36.4/v0.37.x with v11.0.0+incompatible, without corresponding module sums.
2. Read native Go regression job 125798270801: module discovery reaches obsolete client imports and fails resolving the renamed mergo module; the read-only tidy guard refuses the module. The WebApp compiler and migration-tool checks also fail.
3. Current .github/renovate.json at main 84977ddd692110a9d7a1f9bc728531d085bb75e9 has no client-go version-family restriction.

Expected behavior

Only the supported modern client-go version family is offered for these modern Kubernetes modules. Upstream versioning guidance keeps the major version at zero for Kubernetes v1 releases. Valid modern patch/minor discovery and the existing coordinated Kubernetes update remain available.

Actual behavior

The higher numeric legacy major wins dependency selection. Renovate reports an artifact-update failure, and required native validation rejects the result. No dependency update has been merged for this report.

Acceptance criteria

• Add the narrow Go-module package rule needed to exclude legacy client-go tags without disabling current v0.x updates or unrelated major updates.
• Validate the effective Renovate configuration and demonstrate rejection of legacy v11.0.0+incompatible alongside acceptance of the current and next eligible modern v0.x candidates.
• Retain module alignment, tidy, compiler and migration-tool validation; do not add replacements or suppress checks to accommodate the old client.
• After protected delivery, reconcile fix(deps): update module k8s.io/client-go to v11 - autoclosed #5812 at its then-current head and verify that normal modern dependency discovery remains enabled.

Part of #2043. Size: small. Related: #5191 remains the separately coordinated modern Kubernetes dependency update. The bot head was newly pushed when observed; this report does not take over that active branch.