This document includes the steps to add an API group. You may also want to take a look at PR [#16621](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/16621) and PR [#13146](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/13146), which add API groups.
Please also read about [API conventions](api-conventions.md) and [API changes](api_changes.md) before adding an API group.
We plan on improving the way the types are factored in the future; see [#16062](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/16062) for the directions in which this might evolve.
1. Create a folder in pkg/apis to hold you group. Create types.go in pkg/apis/`<group>`/ and pkg/apis/`<group>`/`<version>`/ to define API objects in your group;
2. Create pkg/apis/`<group>`/{register.go, `<version>`/register.go} to register this group's API objects to the encoding/decoding scheme (e.g., [pkg/apis/extensions/register.go](../../pkg/apis/extensions/register.go) and [pkg/apis/extensions/v1beta1/register.go](../../pkg/apis/extensions/v1beta1/register.go);
3. Add a pkg/apis/`<group>`/install/install.go, which is responsible for adding the group to the `latest` package, so that other packages can access the group's meta through `latest.Group`. You probably only need to change the name of group and version in the [example](../../pkg/apis/extensions/install/install.go)). You need to import this `install` package in {pkg/master, pkg/client/unversioned}/import_known_versions.go, if you want to make your group accessible to other packages in the kube-apiserver binary, binaries that uses the client package.
1. Add your "group/" or "group/version" into hack/after-build/{update-generated-conversions.sh, update-generated-deep-copies.sh, verify-generated-conversions.sh, verify-generated-deep-copies.sh};
2. Make sure your pkg/apis/`<group>`/`<version>` directory has a doc.go file with the comment `// +genconversion=true`, to catch the attention of our gen-conversion script.
We are overhauling pkg/client, so this section might be outdated; see [#15730](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/15730) for how the client package might evolve. Currently, to add your group to the client package, you need to
1. Create pkg/client/unversioned/`<group>`.go, define a group client interface and implement the client. You can take pkg/client/unversioned/extensions.go as a reference.
2. Add the group client interface to the `Interface` in pkg/client/unversioned/client.go and add method to fetch the interface. Again, you can take how we add the Extensions group there as an example.