This staging/src/k8s.io/client-go directory is the staging area of the client repo. It contains a versioned client, tools built around the client like the reflector, and all the client dependencies. The content will be periodically published to k8s.io/client-go repo. The staged content is copied from the main repo, i.e., k8s.io/kubernetes, with directory rearrangement and necessary rewritings. To sync the content with the latest code in your local k8s.io/kubernetes, you need to run godep restore in k8s root directory, then run staging/copy.sh. vendor/k8s.io/client-go is a symlink pointing to this staging area, so to use the packages in the staging area, you can import it as "vendor/client-go/", as if the client were vendored. The client will be vendored from k8s.io/client-go for real after the test matrix is converted to vendor k8s components.