Description of problem

Initialization and reconciliation errors are not logged for the gateway-labeler, gateway-service-dns, and gatewayclass unmanaged controllers.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable)

OpenShift 4.21.0.

How reproducible

100%.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a GatewayClass CR with the "openshift.io/gateway-controller/v1" controller name.
2. Check the operator logs.

Actual results

The operator does not log the initialization the gateway-labeler, gateway-service-dns, and gatewayclass controllers or any reconciliation errors from these controllers:

% oc -n openshift-ingress-operator logs -c ingress-operator deployments/ingress-operator | grep -e Starting.Controller | grep -e gatewayclass_controller -e gateway_labeler_controller -e service_dns_controller
zsh: done       oc -n openshift-ingress-operator logs -c ingress-operator  | grep -e Starting.Controller |
zsh: exit 1     grep -e gatewayclass_controller -e gateway_labeler_controller -e
%

Expected results

The initialization of each controller should be logged:

2025-12-23T14:56:04.002-0500	INFO	operator.init	controller/controller.go:209	Starting Controller	{"controller": "gateway_labeler_controller"}
2025-12-23T14:56:04.467-0500	INFO	operator.init	controller/controller.go:209	Starting Controller	{"controller": "gatewayclass_controller"}
2025-12-23T14:56:04.468-0500	INFO	operator.init	controller/controller.go:209	Starting Controller	{"controller": "service_dns_controller"}

Additionally, any reconciliation errors should be logged.

Additional info

This issue is caused by the bump to controller-runtime v0.21.0 (NE-2139).

Before controller-runtime v0.21.0, controller-runtime implicitly set default values for controller options, including a logger, for managed and unmanaged controllers alike. Since controller-runtime v0.21.0, these default values are not implicitly set for unmanaged controllers. In particular, this means that the logger is not initialized, and so the controller initialization and any reconciliation errors are not logged.

https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/controller-runtime/commit/d9ff283bfe844e8e3806eb2d264b2a6fa7815f66 is the specific commit in controller-runtime that removes the implicit setting of default values for controller options.