Merge branch '16.x.x' into with-empty-merge-commit

This no-op merge commit "pretends" to take in all of the changes from the 16.x.x branch since this branch was created from the 16.4 point release. These changes were actually cherry-picked from 16.x.x separately into this branch, but this merge commit allows us to pretend that the branch was created from 16.11.

Author: yaacovCR