What happened?

Currently the Compatibility Versions E2E tests are failing when run against v1.33 with the below error:

> 2024-11-27T02:30:24.881212795Z stderr F E1127 02:30:24.881143       1 run.go:72] "command failed" err="emulation version 1.31 is not between [1.32, 1.33.0-alpha.0.1+0e1abc4d18e353]"

This test is catching a bug where currently it seems that there is some logic in k8s with the validation for --emulated-version where it is not allowing n-2 versions even though Compatibility Versions supports up to n-3

Related kube-apiserver logs link:
https://storage.googleapis.com/kubernetes-ci-logs/logs/ci-kubernetes-e2e-kind-compatibility-versions/1861594576398061568/artifacts/kind-control-plane/containers/kube-apiserver-kind-control-plane_kube-system_kube-apiserver-842342e203722dea42f37c832c5b10193a08bca734ad290c3a1ee3c32921e560.log

Associated TestGrid Alert Information Below + Additional Links:
New TestGrid alerts at sig-testing-kind#compatibility-version-test since commit/0e1abc4d1.

Found 1 failing rows in compatibility-version-test: 1 new, 0 other 1 new Test Failures in compatibility-version-test.
Test ci-kubernetes-e2e-kind-compatibility-versions.Overall has failed 3 times since it last passed at commit/8770bd58d. It started failing between commit/8770bd58d (Tue Nov 26 12:16 PST) and commit/0e1abc4d1 (Tue Nov 26 18:16 PST): .

TestGrid Link: https://testgrid.k8s.io/sig-testing-kind#compatibility-version-test

Prow CI Link For First Failing Test:
https://prow.k8s.io/view/gs/kubernetes-ci-logs/logs/ci-kubernetes-e2e-kind-compatibility-versions/1861594576398061568a

Commits that caused test breakage:
8770bd5...0e1abc4
^ this is associated with creating a new git tag for the v1.32 RC which modifies the k8s version output by git describe/hack/print-workspace-status.sh. Eg: master is now v1.33.0-alpha.0.1+0e1abc4d18e353 with this commit

What did you expect to happen?

K8s v1.33 should work with --emulated-version=1.31

How can we reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible)?

See test-grid test above. I am not sure why but this doesn't repro locally using hack/local-up-cluster.sh (perhaps the current version of k8s is calculated differently using this script?)

Anything else we need to know?

/assign
/sig api-machinery

Kubernetes version

$ kubectl version
# paste output here

Cloud provider

OS version

# On Linux:
$ cat /etc/os-release
# paste output here
$ uname -a
# paste output here

# On Windows:
C:\> wmic os get Caption, Version, BuildNumber, OSArchitecture
# paste output here

Install tools

Container runtime (CRI) and version (if applicable)

Related plugins (CNI, CSI, ...) and versions (if applicable)