macOS 11.0 pools will be transited to private preview.

[AlenaSviridenko]

Hi GitHub Actions community!

A couple of months ago we added a new macOS 11.0 image in a “preview” mode and eventually we expect it to become a production image.

Typically, we increase pool capacity along with increasing image usage, but demand for this pool is outpacing our capacity plan.
Given the constantly growing demand and in order to prevent degraded experience, we have to temporarily transit this pool to a private preview until we come up with a final plan of making macOS 11.0 ready for production use.

What does “private preview” mean?
This limitation will live on organization level (personal accounts are considered as organization too), so if you are using macos-11 somewhere in your organization — you will still be able to use it. But this pool will be inaccessible for new organizations that never used it before.

We are sorry for inconveniences, and will try to open this pool again as soon as possible.

UPDATE

The macOS 11 virtual environment is currently in preview and is automatically available to the existing Enterprise plan customers who used macOS hosted runners at least once between May, 1 - June, 1. New Enterprise plan customers, or customers on other plans, should fill the form to request access to macOS 11 virtual environment. Please view our Big Sur guide for more details.

[tomhamming]

The docs still mention macos-11.0:

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/reference/workflow-syntax-for-github-actions#jobsjob_idruns-on

[AlenaSviridenko]

Hi @tomhamming,
thanks for noticing it, we will update docs soon as well.

[RobbieTheWagner]

Would this have anything to do with my macos builds always hanging now?

[AlenaSviridenko]

Hi @rwwagner90,
closing pool was the first step in resolving constantly increasing queues, and now we are looking into how to improve current queues given the capacity we have. Hopefully, queues will become more healthy soon.
Thank you for your patience.

[RobbieTheWagner]

@AlenaSviridenko thanks, hope things improve soon! I wasted a lot of hours yesterday trying to debug this, but I think it was just the Mac images not working.

[tonyarnold]

Thanks for the info, @noisypigeon. I transitioned to using a couple of Mac minis in our office with self-hosted runners back when this preview started. The performance issues were too much for my team to keep working, so we worked around it.

Good to know that MacStadium is doing free for OSS!

[CamJN]

There doesn't seem to be a free tier... https://www.macstadium.com/pricing

[karapigeon]

@tonyarnold yeahhhh, infra is not fun to maintain haha. Big part of my current role so I tolerate it in my personal projects. 🙈

@CamJN You have to apply but from what I heard most people get approved: https://www.macstadium.com/opensource.

[miketimofeev]

We are happy to announce that macOS-11 is out of preview and now generally available for all the GitHub customers 🥳
The docs will be updated later this week.

[cquanu]

We are happy to announce that macOS-11 is out of preview and now generally available for all the GitHub customers 🥳

The docs will be updated later this week.

@miketimofeev does it mean is for AppCenter too? Are we getting Xcode 12.5?

[miketimofeev]

@cquanu unfortunately, no. This is still in progress and can be tracked here #2072

[Cheesebaron]

Azure Pipelines support is when?

Hosted agent docs for pipelines lead here.

[kode54]

Maybe case sensitive? I believe the OS tags are supposed to be all lower case?

[miketimofeev]

@Cheesebaron all the discussions about Azure Pipelines are here #2072

[miketimofeev]

I'm going to close this issue as the blog post is published https://github.blog/changelog/2021-08-16-github-actions-macos-11-big-sur-is-generally-available-on-github-hosted-runners/ and the Readme on the main page is updated as well:

[abitmore]

FWIW we need to update our workflows from

runs-on: macos-11.0

to

runs-on: macos-11

to get around the error

No runner matching the specified labels was found: macos-11.0

[miketimofeev]

@abitmore sorry for the inconvenience, we should have announced it.

[andreineculau]

@miketimofeev maybe this should go on a separate thread, but can you clarify why you took this decision to go macos-11.0 to macos-11, given that the current version is actually 11.5? Historically what was more important/granular was actually the Xcode version, and only secondarily the macos version - e.g. https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/reference/osx/#macos-version . I have been caught red-handed by this switch earlier today (which means it's now impossible to re-run a workflow that references macos-11.0, which in my books it's a big no-no), and after reading the blogpost I thought "This is definitely a glitch", but your reply above is a confirmation that this is not a glitch but intent. Thanks

[maxim-lobanov]

@andreineculau , We provide the single macOS 11 image (macos-11) that has latest 11.x updates (currently, it is 11.5). When we say macos-11, it means latest 11.x.

Initially, macos-11.0 label was created by mistake under impression that Apple follow the same approach like 10.13, 10.14, 10.15. With the release of macOS 11.1 we have fixed it and created macos-11 label to not confuse users (because macos-11.0 actually contained macOS 11.1 that doesn't sound correct, right?). macos-11.0 was kept for backward compatibility.

I have been caught red-handed by this switch earlier today (which means it's now impossible to re-run a workflow that references macos-11.0, which in my books it's a big no-no)

Sorry for inconvenience, macos-11.0 was disabled by mistake yesterday during opening macOS 11 pools and this issue is already fixed for now. Currently, the label should work and we will keep it for backward compatibility.

As for the Xcode version vs macOS version, we don't provide the separate image for every Xcode so it won't work for us.
The list of Xcode versions installed on macOS 11 can be found in documentation: https://github.com/actions/virtual-environments/blob/main/images/macos/macos-11-Readme.md#xcode

[andreineculau]

@maxim-lobanov Thanks for the clear explanation and confirmation that you'll keep macos-11.0 for backward compatibility!