actions

Ubuntu 22.04 is now generally available on GitHub-hosted runners. To use it now, simply add runs-on: ubuntu-22.04 in your workflow file. Otherwise, our recommendation is to use ubuntu-latest, which currently utilizes Ubuntu 20.04 but will begin running on Ubuntu 22.04 in the near future. This will ensure your workflows are always using a recent OS and removes the need to constantly update workflow files with image versions.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - uses: actions/setup-dotnet@v1
      - name: Build
        run: dotnet build
      - name: Run tests
        run: dotnet test

The Ubuntu 22.04 runner image has different tools and tool versions than Ubuntu 20.04.

Read more on available runner images and beta images terms of use in our documentation.

The Ubuntu 18.04 Actions runner image started our deprecation process on 8/8/22 and will be fully unsupported by 12/1/22. To raise awareness of the upcoming removal, jobs using Ubuntu 18.04 will temporarily fail during scheduled time periods defined below:

• October 3, 12:00 UTC – October 3, 14:00 UTC
• October 18, 14:00 UTC – October 18, 16:00 UTC
• November 15, 18:00 UTC – November 15, 20:00 UTC
• November 30, 20:00 UTC – November 30, 22:00 UTC
• December 15, 20:00 UTC – December 16 00:00 UTC
• January 5, 10.00 UTC – January 5, 14.00 UTC
• January 13, 12.00 UTC – January 13, 16.00 UTC
• January 18, 14.00 UTC – January 18, 18.00 UTC
• January 24, 16.00 UTC – January 24, 20.00 UTC
• February 7, 16.00 UTC – February 7, 22.00 UTC
• February 21, 10.00 UTC – February 21, 22.00 UTC
• March 6, 00.00 UTC – March 7, 00.00 UTC
• March 13, 00.00 UTC – March 14, 00.00 UTC
• March 21, 00.00 UTC – March 22, 00.00 UTC
• March 28, 00.00 UTC – March 29, 00.00 UTC

What you need to do

Workflows using the ubuntu-18.04 YAML workflow label should be updated to ubuntu-20.04, ubuntu-22.04, or ubuntu-latest. You can always get up-to-date information on our tools by reading about the software in GitHub Actions virtual environments. Please contact GitHub Support.

*update: we extended the deprecation schedule until April 2023 with updated dates for brownouts.

Actions runner support for Apple silicon hardware, such as the M1 chip, is now generally available. This provides teams with the capability to run self-hosted macOS workflows in a macOS ARM64 runtime. Now the Actions runner supports M1 and the ARM64 runtime meaning developers can run it on their own M1 or M2 hardware.

Based on initial testing, there are currently two issues to be aware of:

• macOS ARM64 does not support node12. Therefore, the runner will automatically use node16 to execute any javascript Action written for node12.
• All actions provided by GitHub are compatible with the runner except for a known issue with setup-python. The fix for that can be tracked here.

For additional information on how to set up a self-hosted macOS ARM64 runner, please refer to our documentation. If you have any feedback or questions for Actions self-hosted Apple silicon support, you can submit an issue in the runner repository.

Previously we retained self-hosted GitHub Action runners in the GitHub Actions UI for 30 days after they were last seen to connect. With the growth in the use of ephemeral runners and the scale of use of self-hosted, this is becoming hard for users to manage. As a result, we are making the following changes to the time we retain offline runners for.

A non-ephemeral self-hosted Actions runner is automatically removed from GitHub if we have not seen it connect to GitHub for more than 14 days.

An ephemeral self-hosted Actions runner is automatically removed from GitHub if we have not seen it connect to GitHub for more than one day.

Learn more about self-hosted runners in GitHub Actions

For questions, visit the GitHub Actions community

To see what's next for Actions, visit our public roadmap

The macOS 12 Actions runner image is now generally available. Start using GitHub Actions to build and publish apps for the Apple ecosystem with the latest version of Xcode by updating your jobs to include runs-on: macos-12

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: macos-12
     steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Build
        run: swift build
      - name: Run tests
        run: swift test

The macOS 12 Actions runner image has different tools and tool versions than macOS 11. See the full list of changed software.

If you spot any issues with your workflows when using the image, please let us know by creating an issue in the virtual-environments repository.

Workflows triggered by workflow_dispatch and workflow_call can now access their inputs using the inputs context.

Previously workflow_dispatch inputs were in the event payload. This made it difficult for workflow authors who wanted to have one workflow that was both reusable and manually triggered. Now a workflow author can write a single workflow triggered by workflow_dispatch and workflow_call and use the inputs context to access the input values.

For workflows triggered by workflow_dispatch inputs are still available in the github.event.inputs context to maintain compatibility.

Using the inputs context in GitHub Actions

For questions, visit the GitHub Actions community

To see what's next for Actions, visit our public roadmap

Actions authors can now specify that their action can run in Node.js 16 by specifying runs.using as node16 in the action's action.yml. This is in addition to the existing Node.js 12 support; actions can continue to specify runs.using: node12 to use the Node.js 12 runtime.

Runners supporting Node.js 16 actions are available on all GitHub-hosted runners and in GitHub Enterprise Server 3.4 and newer. GitHub Enterprise Server 3.3 and newer can manually install a newer runner to add support for Node.js 16 based actions.

As a result, actions authors who move from targeting Node.js 12 to Node.js 16 should release with a new major version number to communicate that there is a possible breaking change for GitHub Enterprise Server 3.3 and earlier.

A beta of the Ubuntu 22.04 runner image for GitHub Actions is now available. Start using GitHub Actions to build software on the latest version of Ubuntu by updating your jobs to include runs-on: ubuntu-22.04

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
     steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: '14'
      - run: npm install -g bats
      - run: bats -v

The Ubuntu 22.04 Actions runner image has different tools and tool versions than ubuntu 20.04. See the difference between the two OS versions here. Click here for the full list of software available on Ubuntu 22.04.

If you spot any issues with your workflows when using the image, please let us know by creating an issue in the virtual-environments repository.

While the runner image is in beta, you may experience longer queue times during peak usage hours.

GitHub Actions now lets you generate markdown files and publish them as a job summary.

We have heard a lot of feedback from users asking for the ability to output something beyond simple text. For example, after running a bunch of tests it would be great to see how many passed, failed, or were skipped at a glance rather than digging through hundreds of lines of log output. Now, using the same familiar functionality that powers pull requests and issues, an action can generate custom Markdown content on the run summary generated by each job.

A couple of GitHub Stars with early access have already incorporated this feature into their test loggers for dotnet test and Jest.

To learn more checkout the blog post from the GitHub Actions engineering team

GitHub Actions simplifies using secrets with reusable workflows with the secrets: inherit keyword.

Previously when passing secrets to a reusable workflow, you had to pass each secret as a separate argument. Now you can simply pass the secrets: inherit to the reusable workflow and the secrets will be inherited from the calling workflow.

Learn more about reusable workflows in GitHub Actions

The macOS 12 Actions runner image public beta is now available. Start using GitHub Actions to build and publish apps for the Apple ecosystem with the latest version of Xcode (13.3) by updating your jobs to include runs-on: macos-12

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: macos-12
     steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Build
        run: swift build
      - name: Run tests
        run: swift test

The macOS 12 Actions runner image has different tools and tool versions than macOS 11. See the full list of changed software.

If you spot any issues with your workflows when using the image, please let us know by creating an issue in the virtual-environments repository.

While the runner image is in beta, you may experience longer queue times during peak usage hours. Follow the public roadmap for information on general availability of this image.

If you manage self-hosted runners for GitHub Actions, you can now specify shell scripts that run before the runner starts running a job from a workflow, and after a job completes.

This allows you to perform a task on your self-hosted runner before a job starts and after a job ends, so you can set up your execution environment and clean up after workflow runs to ensure a consistent state on the runner itself, without requiring users to add that to their workflows.

Learn more about running scripts before or after a job

For questions, visit the GitHub Actions community

To see what's next for Actions, visit our public roadmap

You can now restrict self-hosted runner groups to only be accessible from certain workflows.

In addition to restricting which repositories can access specific enterprise and organization runner groups, administrators can further control access by selecting specific workflow files and versions. Combining this feature with reusable workflow can help you create more secure standard workflows in your organization.

Learn more about restricting access to self-hosted runners

For questions, visit the GitHub Actions community

To see what's next for Actions, visit our public roadmap

You can now re-run only failed jobs or an individual job in a GitHub Actions workflow run.

For more details see Save time with partial re-runs in GitHub Actions on the GitHub blog.

For questions, visit the GitHub Actions community

To see what's next for Actions, visit our public roadmap