Backward compatibility is broken because of cri-api change

[bitoku]

Due to this recent change (kubernetes/kubernetes#139168 (comment)), crictl no longer accepts environment variables in plain text; it now requires them to be base64-encoded.

Here is a reproducer: https://gist.github.com/bitoku/749684a85b44018e7d5cd4c77cd47202

The question is: do we want to fix this incompatibility or just leave it as is?
The downside of keeping the compatibility is that it may require some custom unmarshalling and that we won't be able to test non-UTF8 binaries using crictl.

[bitoku]

cc @SergeyKanzhelev @saschagrunert

[SergeyKanzhelev]

can we actually fix it? Isn't the problem on the wire format?

[bitoku]

@SergeyKanzhelev It's caused by the change of the wire format, but the problem itself is more of a parser. The parser now only accepts base64-encoded variables for the field because it's changed from string to []byte.
I'd say it's not impossible, but it needs special treatment only for that field.

[SergeyKanzhelev]

I didn't look close. After the cherry-picks in k/k, will we need to just bump dependencies? Are you suggesting fixing it and release a patch version for crictl?

I am open to have a special treatment for the field since it is a regression