`mergeFromPatch` does not consider the zero value as part of the patch

[enxebre]

A CRD has a status sub-resource with a required integer field: status.IntField
When trying to patch the status for the first time with status.IntField=0 the diff given by patch.Data(obj) does not consider the zero value as part of the patch to be applied and the request via mergeFromPatch client.Status().Patch fails with is invalid: status.IntField: Required value
Is the only way to go to make IntField a pointer?

[DirectXMan12]

/kind bug
/priority backlog

Do you want zero to be a valid value? Or is that considered unset?

[enxebre]

Do you want zero to be a valid value? Or is that considered unset?

A valid value.

[DirectXMan12]

is this a structural schema or a non-structural one? I wonder if // +default=0 would work.

[enxebre]

yeh I wanted to do that unfortunately this is non-structural yet

[DirectXMan12]

hmm... I don't think there's a good way for MergePatchFrom to know that the field changed -- it basically just serializes both instances and then does a diff of the raw JSON, and a field is either omitempty or it isn't, but in either case the value doesn't change from an empty object. You might have to write your own patch generator that knows how to handle the case of "object doesn't exist yet" or something, or just do different behavior if the status is unset initially.

[enxebre]

Thanks for the ideas Solly, I think we can close this. I'll go by using a pointer for now and would use //+default=0 for a structural schema