[macOS] Deprecation of 4 tools on November 3rd.

[erik-bershel]

Breaking changes

According to our current support policy and goal to provide the safest environment for developers, we will remove 4 tools from the macOS images beginning in November. Tools to be removed ares:

• Node.js 18 as it has reached EOL

• Android NDK 26 as it has reached EOL

• GCC 12 as we only support 3 major versions at a time

• Ruby 3.1 toolcache as it has reached EOL

The changes will affect all macOS images.

Target date

Image deployment will start on November 3rd, 2025 and will take about 3 days.

The motivation for the changes

Our support policy states we will remove EOL versions, after deprecation or EOL. In addition, some have not received security updates for a long period of time. In order to maintain an acceptable level of security and ease of maintenance, we are forced to periodically get rid of such tools.

Possible impact

If your workflow or pipeline uses one of the listed tools without prior configuration, it will stop working.

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• macOS 13
• macOS 13 Arm64
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

Mitigation ways

If you see any issues with your workflows, you may do one of the next steps:

• GCC 12 is available for installation from Homebrew with a simple command brew install gcc@12
• Node.js 18 is available for installation with actions/setup-node or UseNode@1
• Ruby 3.1 is available for installation with ruby/setup-ruby or from Homebrew with a simple command brew install ruby@3.1
• Android NDK 26 is available for installation with a simple command echo y | /Users/runner/Library/Android/sdk/cmdline-tools/latest/bin/sdkmanager --install "ndk;26.3.11579264"