Previous and current version container images used in same job with matrix

[MikeMcC399]

• Cypress Cloud users with GitHub Actions are reporting an issue for parallel test recording on Chrome at the moment. See issue This machine is sending different environment parameters than the first machine that started this parallel run. cypress-io/github-action#602.

• This concerns the rollout of ubuntu-22.04: 20230409.1 which bumps the version of Google Chrome from 111.0.5563.146 to 112.0.5615.49, which is a major version change. See also Ubuntu 22.04 (20230409) Image Update #7419.

• It seems that the images started by a matrix strategy in the same job are currently sometimes invoked as 20230402.1 (previous) and sometimes as 20230409.1 (current).

  test:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      strategy:
      matrix:
          # run copies of the current job in parallel
          containers: [1, 2, 3, 4]

Is this expected or is it a bug?

Edit: This question should probably be in https://github.com/actions/runner/discussions instead of runner-images. Feel free to move it.
Since the rollout is now > 99.9% complete, this issue is no longer occurring, however it can be expected to happen at the next rollout, so feedback is still welcome!

[MikeMcC399]

I have transferred this question to the GitHub product feedback page

• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/52956

[erik-bershel]

@MikeMcC399
Hello! Such a situation is quite possible. Updating the image version does not happen simultaneously - it is a quite time-consuming process due to many reasons. Therefore, at the same moment in time, two different versions of the runner can be found in the ecosystem, which happened in this case.

[MikeMcC399]

Hi @erik-bershel

In the meantime I've submitted https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/52956 as an enhancement request. It has however not received any response so far.

[erik-bershel]

You did it right - unfortunately, we cannot influence this from our side.

[sgronblo]

Would it not be possible to allow users to specify the version explicitly? Our Cypress tests currently cannot be run due to this behavior. It would be nice if when this happens we could temporarily put a version in place to ensure all runners use the same version and then remove the version specifier once the rollout is complete.

It would be even better if you could put something like "ensure_same_runner_image: true" in the job definition and have Github not mix up different runner images.

[ilia-shipitsin]

maybe specifying container images could help (i.e. running CI inside some containers)

name: CI

on: [ push, workflow_dispatch ]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    container:
      image: php:${{ matrix.php_version }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        php_version: ["8.2", "8.1"]
        
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Run a one-line script
        run: php --version

[MikeMcC399]

@ilia-shipitsin

maybe specifying container images could help (i.e. running CI inside some containers)

This is indeed a workaround. Cypress documentation Specify Browsers in Parallel Builds does suggest this. Cypress however only provides Docker images for Linux, not for Windows or macOS. See https://hub.docker.com/u/cypress.

It would be great to have some way provided by GitHub so that parallel runs are locked to run ALL on the old version or ALL on the new runner version in one matrix job.

[ilia-shipitsin]

"containers" are linux-only feature in Github Actions

[MikeMcC399]

@ilia-shipitsin

"containers" are linux-only feature in Github Actions

Thanks for filling in my knowledge gap there!

GitHub help jobs.<job_id>.container gives some more detailed info on that.

[samus-aran]

We're locking this discussion because it has not had recent activity and/or other members have asked for more information to assist you but received no response. Thank you for helping us maintain a productive and tidy community for all our members.

Related comments and discussions:

• Different runner images used by containers in same job runner#2812 (comment)
• https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/52956