actions

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Actions metrics improvements: adding runner labels

Starting today, you can now view runner labels in the Jobs tab of your Actions metrics. You can filter by the runner label to view runner specific metrics and answer questions such as:
– “What is the average queue time for my runner?”
– “Which repositories are using my runner?”
– “Which jobs are using the ubuntu-latest label?”

Performance metrics screen with runner label filter applied

To access the feature, on your organization home page, select Insights near the top of the page, and then select ‘Actions Performance Metrics’ on the left side of the page.
To learn more about GitHub Actions Metrics, check out our public documentation or head to our community discussion to ask questions and provide feedback.

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Notice of upcoming releases and breaking changes for GitHub Actions

Ubuntu-latest upcoming breaking changes

We will migrate the ubuntu-latest label to ubuntu 24 starting on December 5, 2024 and ending on January 17, 2025. The ubuntu 24 image has a different set of tools and packages than ubuntu 22. We have made cuts to the list of packages so that we can maintain our SLA for free disk space. This may break your workflows if you depend on certain packages that have been removed. Please review this list to see if you are using any affected packages.

Ubuntu 20 image is closing down

We are beginning the process of closing down the Ubuntu 20 hosted runner image, following our N-1 OS support policy. This image will be fully retired by April 1, 2025. We recommend updating workflows to use ubuntu-22.04, or ubuntu-24.04.

Artifacts v3 brownouts

Artifact actions v3 will be closing down by January 30th, 2025. To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, we will temporarily fail jobs using v3 of actions/upload-artifact or actions/download-artifact. Builds that are scheduled to run during the brownout periods will fail. The brownouts are scheduled for the following dates and times:
– January 9th 5pm – 6pm UTC
– January 16th 3pm – 7pm UTC
– January 23rd 2pm – 10pm UTC

actions/cache v1-v2 and actions/toolkit cache package closing down

Starting February 1st, 2025, Actions’ cache storage will move to a new architecture, as a result we are closing down v1-v2 of actions/cache as well as all previous versions of the @actions/cache package(prior to 4.0.0) in actions/toolkit.
Attempting to use a version of the @actions/cache package after the announced deprecation date will result in a workflow failure. Announcements have been posted in the actions/cache and actions/toolkit repositories with additional information on the migration. Note that this does not affect GitHub Enterprise Server customers, you can continue to use all versions without failure.

Updates to the network allow list for self-hosted runners and Azure private networking

With the upcoming GA of Immutable Actions, Actions will now be stored as packages in the GitHub Container Registry. Please ensure that your self-hosted runner allow lists are updated to accommodate the network traffic. Specifically, you should allow traffic to pkg.actions.githubusercontent.com to ensure Immutable Actions can be downloaded successfully and jobs don’t fail during setup. If you already allow *.actions.githubusercontent.com which is listed as an required domain then no action is necessary. Traffic will also be required to ghcr.io for publishing new versions of an Immutable Action in the future, which will be available with the GA release.

This update also affects runners in all versions of GitHub Enterprise Server that use the GitHub Connect feature to download actions directly from github.com. Customers are advised to update their self-hosted runner network allow lists accordingly. For further guidance on communication between self-hosted runners and GitHub, please refer to our documentation.

Additionally, our guidance for configuring Azure private networking has been updated to account for the new domains. The following IP addresses have been added to the NSG template in our documentation.
– 140.82.121.33/32
– 140.82.121.34/32
– 140.82.113.33/32
– 140.82.113.34/32
– 140.82.112.33/32
– 140.82.112.34/32
– 140.82.114.33/32
– 140.82.114.34/32
– 192.30.255.164/31
– 4.237.22.32/32
– 20.217.135.1/32
– 4.225.11.196/32
– 20.26.156.211/32

Upcoming breaking image changes

For a full list of this month’s breaking changes to our hosted runner images, please see our announcement page.

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Artifact Attestations now support multiple subjects

Artifact Attestations now supports attesting multiple subjects simultaneously. When the attest-build-provenance or attest-sbom actions create multiple attestations, a single attestation is created with references to each of the supplied subjects, rather than generating separate attestations for each artifact. This reduces the number of attestations that you need to create and manage. We published these changes as new versions of the respective actions. Please update your workflows to reference the new versions in order to leverage the new functionality.

Learn more about using Artifact Attestations to establish provenance for builds

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Improved pull request merge experience now in public preview

To help you better understand the state of your pull request and get it merged faster, the merge experience on the pull request page has been improved! This experience is currently in public preview.

Screen shot of the updated merge box page on the pull request page showing that 1 review is required, a list of status checks (some failing), and a message about not having any merge conflicts.

What’s new

We’ve maintained the familiar look of the existing merge experience while incorporating several usability improvements:

  • Checks grouped by status: checks are now grouped by status with failing checks prioritized at the top of the list, making it easier to identify issues that need attention
  • Checks ordered alphabetically: status checks are now ordered alphabetically to make it easier to find a specific check
  • Commit metadata validation: errors from failing commit metadata rules (like non-compliant commit messages) can now be corrected and retried
  • Improved accessibility: consistent keyboard navigation, focus management, and landmarks help make the experience more accessible to everyone

For a more complete list of changes visit the feedback discussion.

Try it out

This improved experience is rolling out gradually and is turned off by default. Once it becomes available to you, a Try the new merge experience link will appear below the merge box on the pull request page:

Image

Click it to switch to the improved experience. A link is also available for easily switching back to the existing experience. You can also toggle the experience via the feature preview dialog.

Known issues

As this experience is in public preview, you may run into some bugs and missing features (let us know when you do). Some of the known issues include:

  • Actions workflows requiring approval cannot be approved currently
  • Changing the commit author email when merging is not currently supported

For a more complete list of known issues visit the feedback discussion.

Feedback

We want to hear from you! To provide feedback, ask questions, and see a list of known issues, visit the GitHub Community improved merge box discussion!

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Improved support for labeled Actions runners in CodeQL code scanning

When configuring CodeQL security analysis using code scanning’s default setup, you can now specify whether to run the analysis on a standard GitHub-hosted runner, a larger GitHub-hosted runner, or a self-hosted runner. Previously, support for larger GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners was limited to those with the code-scanning custom label. Now, you can specify any custom label, ensuring the analysis runs on the desired machine(s).

For example, using a custom label you are able to assign more powerful runners to critical repositories for faster analyses, better spread the workload over GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners, or run the analysis on a particular platform (like macOS).

The new setting is available today on GitHub.com, and can be configured both at the repository level and within code security configurations for deployments at scale. This new setting will also be included in GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) version 3.16.

Learn more about configuring default setup for code scanning.

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Notice of breaking changes for GitHub Actions

Ubuntu-latest upcoming breaking changes

We will migrate the ubuntu-latest label to ubuntu 24 starting on December 5, 2024 and ending on January 17, 2025. The ubuntu 24 image has a different set of tools and packages than ubuntu 22. We have made cuts to the list of packages so that we can maintain our SLA for free disk space. This may break your workflows if you depend on certain packages that have been removed. Please review this list to see if you are using any affected packages.

Artifacts v3 brownouts

Artifact actions v3 will be closing down by January 30, 2025. To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, we will temporarily fail jobs using v3 of actions/upload-artifact or actions/download-artifact. Builds that are scheduled to run during the brownout periods will fail. The brownouts are scheduled for the following dates and times:

  • January 9, 12pm – 1pm EST
  • January 16, 10am – 2pm EST
  • January 23, 9am – 5pm EST

Changes to workflow validation for pull requests originating from forked repositories

Currently, you can prevent Actions workflows from automatically running on pull requests made from forked repositories. Actions evaluates whether the actor initiating the request is trusted based on the repository’s settings. Effective today, Actions will require validation of both the pull request author and the event actor to determine if a workflow should run from a pull request event originating from a forked repository. For more information on for pull request approvals, see our documentation.

New webhook rate limit

As GitHub continues to invest in availability, GitHub Actions is introducing a new webhook rate limit per repository. Each repository is now limited to 1500 triggered events every 10 seconds. For more details about the new webhook rate limit, please refer to our documentation.

Updates to the network allow list for self-hosted runners and Azure private networking

With the upcoming GA of Immutable Actions, Actions will now be stored as packages in the GitHub Container Registry. Please ensure that your self-hosted runner allow lists are updated to accommodate the network traffic. Specifically, you should allow traffic to ghcr.io and *.actions.githubusercontent.com. If you require more specific domains, you can use pkg.actions.githubusercontent.com instead of *.actions.githubusercontent.com.

This update also affects runners in all versions of GitHub Enterprise Server that use the GitHub Connect feature to download actions directly from github.com. Customers are advised to update their self-hosted runner network allow lists accordingly. For further guidance on communication between self-hosted runners and GitHub, please refer to our documentation.

Additionally, our guidance for configuring Azure private networking has been updated to account for the the new domains. The following IP addresses have been added to the NSG template in our documentation.
– 140.82.121.33/32
– 140.82.121.34/32
– 140.82.113.33/32
– 140.82.113.34/32
– 140.82.112.33/32
– 140.82.112.34/32
– 140.82.114.33/32
– 140.82.114.34/32
– 192.30.255.164/31
– 4.237.22.32/32
– 20.217.135.1/32
– 4.225.11.196/32
– 20.26.156.211/32

See more

Actions Performance Metrics in public preview

Today, Actions Performance Metrics is now in public preview for all users of GitHub Actions. Actions Performance Metrics is an observability UI that gives you insights into your workflow or job performance for your organizations or repositories. To access the feature, on your organization home page, select Insights near the top of the page, and then select ‘Actions Performance Metrics’ on the left side of the page.

Performance metrics can help you answer these commonly asked questions about your Actions workflow runs:

  • How long does it take for my workflows or jobs to complete?
  • How long are my workflows or jobs waiting to run?
  • Which of my workflows or jobs are consistently failing?
  • Where are my longest running workflows or jobs originating from?

Actions Performance metrics dashboard job view

GitHub Actions Metrics for Free, Pro, and Team plans

We are also pleased to announce that with today’s release, GitHub Actions Metrics are now available to Free, Pro, and Team plans. Previously, this feature was only available to those on the GitHub Enterprise Cloud plan.

To learn more about GitHub Actions Metrics, check out our public documentation or head to our community discussion to ask questions and provide feedback.

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Actions: Runner groups now available for organizations on Free plan

Starting today, organizations on all plans, including the Free plan, can now utilize GitHub Actions runner groups with self-hosted runners. Runner groups enable you to manage runner permissions and control access to these runners across your organization.

Please note that GitHub-hosted larger runners are not available to free organizations and therefore cannot be included in runner groups. For more details about managing access to self-hosted runners using runner groups, please refer to our documentation.

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Repository level Actions Usage Metrics – public preview

Actions Usage Metrics is in public preview for all GitHub Enterprise Cloud customers at the repository level.

Actions Usage Metrics enables you to view data about your Actions workflow runs in your repositories. Launched initially at the Organization level, this dashboard helps teams identify opportunities to optimize pipelines and reduce wasted runtime minutes which, when addressed, can lead to faster runs and increased developer productivity.

To learn more about Actions Usage Metrics, check out our docs or head to our community discussion to ask questions and provide feedback.

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Introducing “CI/CD Admin” – A New Pre-Defined Organization Role for GitHub Actions

We are excited to introduce the CI/CD Admin role, a pre-defined organization role designed to streamline the management of settings and policies for GitHub Actions.

In March 2024, GitHub announced fine-grained permissions for Actions, which organizations could apply to custom roles. However, organizations are limited to 10 custom roles, and many customers prefer not to use these slots for an all-encompassing CI/CD role that requires ongoing updates as new permissions are added.

With the new CI/CD Admin role, organization owners and teams can now delegate comprehensive CI/CD management to individuals without the need to maintain a custom role. This pre-defined role, maintained by GitHub, includes the following permissions:

  • Actions general settings
  • Organization runners and runner groups
  • Actions secrets
  • Actions variables
  • Network configuration
  • Actions usage metrics

For more details about pre-defined organization roles and the fine-grained permissions included in the CI/CD Admin role, please refer to our documentation.

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Actions: new images and ubuntu-latest changes

Ubuntu 24 for GitHub-hosted runners is now GA

The Ubuntu 24.04 image for Actions is now generally available. To use Ubuntu 24 directly on your GitHub-hosted runners update runs-on: in your workflow file to ubuntu-24.04.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v4
      - name: Build
        run: dotnet build
      - name: Run tests
        run: dotnet test

The Ubuntu 24.04 runner image has different tools and tool versions than Ubuntu 22.04.

ubuntu-latest migration

The ubuntu-latest label will migrate to Ubuntu 24 over the course of the next month, beginning September 23rd and finishing on October 30th. During migration, you can determine if your job has migrated by viewing the “Runner Image” information in the “Set up job” step of your Actions logs.

macOS 15 for GitHub-hosted runners in Public Beta

The macOS 15 image for Actions is now available in public beta. To use macOS 15 directly, update runs-on: in your workflow file to macos-15, macos-15-xlarge, or macos-15-large.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: macos-15
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Build
        run: swift build
      - name: Run tests
        run: swift test

The macOS 15 runner image has different tools and tool versions than macOS 14.

To view the list of installed software for each image, or report issues, head to the runner-images repository.

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End of life for Actions Node16

Following our change to default customers to use Node20, Node16 will reach end of life in the Actions runner on November 12, 2024.

From November 12 onward, we will no longer include Node16 in the Actions runner and customers will no longer be able to use Node16 Actions or operating systems that do not support Node20.

To prevent disruption to your Actions workflows, if you’re an Actions maintainer, update your actions to run on Node20 instead of Node16. If you’re an Actions user, update your workflows with latest versions of the actions, which run on Node20.

Learn more about Actions configuration settings or using versions for Actions. Join the discussion within GitHub Community.

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Notice of upcoming deprecations and changes in GitHub Actions services

Over the next six months, we will be making the following changes and deprecations to the GitHub Actions service:

Reduction to Webhook rate limit in GitHub Actions
Starting October 1st, 2024 we will be adding a new rate limit of 1,250 requests per 10 seconds per repository for incoming Webhook events for GitHub Actions. After monitoring usage over the past several weeks, we believe that no customers will be impacted by this change, but if you believe you will need to exceed this in the future, please reach out to GitHub support.

Cache v1-v2 deprecation
Starting February 1st, 2025, Actions’ cache storage will move to a new architecture, resulting in the deprecation of v1-v2 of actions/cache. Attempting to use a version of the action after the announced deprecation date will result in a workflow failure. Please note: if you are pinned to a specific version or SHA of the action, your workflows will also fail after February 1st. We strongly encourage you to update your workflows to begin using v3 or v4 of actions/cache as soon as possible.

This deprecation will not impact any existing versions of GitHub Enterprise Server that are currently in use. Cached entries within their retention period will remain accessible from the UI or REST API regardless of the version used to upload. This announcement will also be added to the actions/cache repository.

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GitHub Actions: arm64 Linux and Windows runners are now generally available

Arm64 Linux and Windows GitHub-hosted runners for Actions are now generally available. This new addition to our suite of hosted runners provides power, performance & sustainability improvements for all your Actions jobs. Arm64 runners are available to customers on our Team and Enterprise Cloud plans.

“We switched to the GitHub arm64 runners from a custom, self-managed setup on AWS Graviton instances. Switching to GitHub runners has saved us over 75% on our monthly fees and removed all the management overhead, which is particularly important given we’re a seed stage startup. The ARM runners have significantly improved build times from over 30 minutes on x86 runners to around 4 minutes on ARM. This allows us to iterate on pull requests much faster, and run the build process for ARM and x86 in parallel as part of the same GitHub Actions workflow, simplifying the process of getting code to production for our development team.” -David Mytton, Founder, Arcjet

Head over to the GitHub blog to read more about the benefits of arm64 runners and how to get started.

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