In Velero version 1.16, how can I interact with Velero programmatically using Golang code?

[cszixin]

In Velero 1.14.1, I could use something like vclientSet "github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/pkg/generated/clientset/versioned" to get Velero's clientset. However, in newer versions of Velero, the clientset is no longer auto-generated. In this case, how should I handle it? Could you provide an example? I want to upgrade from 1.14.1 to 1.16 but don’t want my code to change too much, especially the parts that interact with Velero.

[blackpiglet]

Please use the controller-runtime unstructured client.

https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/velero/blob/670c870c2d2afc7bc668e89139c1f5be14827d05/pkg/cmd/server/server.go#L194C21-L197

[cszixin]

Why was the structured client removed in versions after 1.15 despite being more convenient? Our codebase extensively uses structured client, and now we want to upgrade to 1.15 but found the workload to be quite substantial.

[blackpiglet]

It's part of the modernizing Velero task.
Related issue is #2607
Because Velero moved to the kubebuilder infrastructure, there is no need to keep the previously generated client-go's code.