Node 24 for actions like `actions/checkout@v5`

[saitho]

GitHub Actions such as actions/checkout@v5 now require Node 24

[reneleonhardt]

actions/setup-python@v6 too:
https://github.com/actions/setup-python/releases/tag/v6.0.0

[gdude2002]

Noticing this with Forgejo's actions/checkout and Github's actions/setup-java as well. Seems like an update is in order if possible.

[reneleonhardt]

Still don't understand why important actions are voluntarily breaking everything when no one is using node 24, it's even not LTS yet.
And it even looks like they're skipping node 22 all along after not wanting to update for years, jumping from 20 to 24, what's the reason?

[gdude2002]

I've just noticed that @catthehacker hasn't been around on GitHub for a very long time (last contribution was an issue creation in February) and has no contact info, so I had a look around and found #139 - stating this repository is effectively deprecated and will be moved to https://github.com/actions-oss/act-docker-images. This was also noted in #125 (which at the time complained that the image didn't include Node 20).

The actions-oss/act-docker-images repo has a similar issue (actions-oss/act-docker-images#3) which points at a pull request (actions-oss/act-docker-images#2) being worked on by @panekj (thanks for your hard work!) - but it appears that it's been in the works since January.

What this means to me, ultimately, is that we're up the creek without a paddle for now. This repo is soft-deprecated, and while I appreciate @waja (who is a contributor) creating #154, I have to wonder whether the maintenance of these images is truly nailed down.

While I genuinely do understand that people are busy and this is a free, volunteer project, it's worth noting that the images in this repository are relied on by a huge number of people - including, apparently, Codeberg's own Actions offering. @panekj suggested in this Codeberg issue that they should move to the actions-oss images. This seems like a potentially okay idea if actions-oss/act-docker-images#2 ends up merged, but for now, it seems we're stuck in a bit of limbo here when it comes to actively maintained base images for CI systems.

Do we have any specific info on what to expect here, ideas for alternatives, ways to support project maintenance, or information on how contributors can help to push things along?

[merlinz01]

Ping? Five months later...

[panekj]

❮ docker run -ti --rm ghcr.io/catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest node --version
v24.13.1

[merlinz01]

Ah, I see, Gitea Actions images are not being kept up to date. https://gitea.com/gitea/runner-images/issues/24

BTW, what is the state of your PR to migrate to the actions-oss repository, or of the migration in general?

[panekj]

So I've been through a long journey of finding language or tooling that will not fail me and others in maintaining and extending the images (example: 3eba278) and I've tested things and everything just has some issues, e.g.

• sh/bash has atrocious syntax and lacks basic concepts of PLs
• ansible just dies between major distro versions
• I still don't know what is the deal with perl and switch/case syntax
• pretty much every programming language is terrible because of not being shell-like friendly
• powershell would be great but it's not that portable and I'm afraid of bloating the images because of it

right now I'm looking at amber-lang, writing custom buildkit frontend and some personal project that's basically ansible without the python issues + packer

the additional goal is to make possible building images easily with other linux distributions so I can attract more people that could be potential maintainers

this unfortunately all is coupled with me having to take care of family and not having any income source and having split attention between multiple projects (which is why I jumped here and fixed the image building)