Kubectl patch $deleteFromPrimitiveList directive
It seems to be officially supported, but not well documented.
The best documentation I could find was a markdown file in the community repo that covers this and other strategic merge patch directives.
This documentation specifically calls out backward compatibility:
Changes to the strategic merge patch must be backwards compatible such that patch requests valid in previous versions continue to be valid. That is, old patch formats sent by old clients to new servers with must continue to function correctly.