Shouldn't istio operator expose istiod instead of pilot?

Config
1

Reading this article about Istiod being the combination of Pilot + Citadel + Galley; it is weird that on the istio operator yaml file we are still defining something like:

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  ...
  components:
    pilot:
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        hpaSpec:
          minReplicas: 2
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
    ...

This is according to the docs as you can see here

Shouldn’t we instead be able to define istiod instead of pilot?

apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
metadata:
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  ...
  components:
    istiod:
      enabled: true
      k8s:
        hpaSpec:
          minReplicas: 2
    ingressGateways:
    - name: istio-ingressgateway
    ...
2

A good and valid question, I would ask some expert to express their opinion here.

3

This is probably due to the fact that it would be a breaking change to the API at this point, and would not be worth all the extra work. You can always create a PR and have the maintainers weigh in.