Upcoming deprecation of Node.js 20 and impacts to CI tests #226
Description
Github has deprecated Node.js 20 in favor of Node.js 24, with 2 June 2026 as the date on which they will disable Node.js 20. This impacts several actions in the existing and modified (by #218) CI workflow. An example warning message from one of the CI action logs is as follows:
Node.js 20 actions are deprecated. The following actions are running on Node.js 20 and may not work as expected: actions/cache@v4, actions/checkout@v3. Actions will be forced to run with Node.js 24 by default starting June 2nd, 2026. Please check if updated versions of these actions are available that support Node.js 24. To opt into Node.js 24 now, set the FORCE_JAVASCRIPT_ACTIONS_TO_NODE24=true environment variable on the runner or in your workflow file. Once Node.js 24 becomes the default, you can temporarily opt out by setting ACTIONS_ALLOW_USE_UNSECURE_NODE_VERSION=true. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/
In reviewing CI action logs, it appears that the following actions (at a minimum) are impacted:
- actions/checkout@v3
- actions/upload-artifact@v4
- conda-incubator/[email protected]
- actions/cache@v4
So long as the action maintainers have provided updated versions that run with Node.js 24, all we should need to do is update these action calls accordingly. For instance,
- actions/cache@v4 can be updated to actions/cache@v5 without breaking changes since the Github-hosted runners we use have been sufficiently updated
- actions/checkout@v3 can be updated to actions/checkout@v5, which was the first to support Node.js 24, or actions/checkout@v6
I can't tell if the other two listed above have been updated to work with Node.js 24, however. The conda-incubator/setup-miniconda repo release log indicates when it was updated to work with Node.js 20, but nothing specific for Node.js 24 as of yet.