Bumping cmake from version 3 to version 4 in ubuntu 24 image breaks building some projects.

[gtjoseph]

Description

Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS currently provides cmake-3.28.3-1build7. The ubuntu24/20250907.24.1 image has 3.31.6 which is fine since it's only a minor version bump. ubuntu24/20250915.37 however now shows 4.1.1 which breaks compatibility with many projects. Bumping a package by a major version in the same distribution major version IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. The last time you did this to cmake, you had to roll it back.

See #11933
See #11926

Please revert this change!

Oh, and it appears that there's no distribution that actually ships cmake 4 right now, even Ubuntu 25.04 has 3.31.6.

UNTIL IT APPEARS IN A DISTRIBUTION YOU SHOULDN'T BE INCLUDING IT IN AN IMAGE!!!

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions - Standard Runners
• GitHub Actions - Larger Runners

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• macOS 13
• macOS 13 Arm64
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• macOS 26 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

Image version and build link

https://github.com/actions/runner-images/releases/tag/ubuntu24/20250915.37

Is it regression?

https://github.com/actions/runner-images/releases/tag/ubuntu24/20250907.24.1

Expected behavior

All existing cmake projects build for version 3

Actual behavior

Projects that still use older configuration directives fail to build.

Repro steps

Try to build an older project.

[gtjoseph]

I'm sorry but that's not an excuse. cmake 4 isn't shipped by any current distribution and it doesn't explain what those "dependency issues" are. Forcing everyone to have to build from source to get the version that's shipped with the distribution the image is built from isn't acceptable.

@kishorekumar-anchala can you please explain in detail why this change is being forced?

[RaviAkshintala]

@gtjoseph Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We will look into this issue and will update you after investigation.

[gtjoseph]

@RaviAkshintala Thank you.

So an issue with MacOS and Homebrew is causing the upgrade in the Linux images? That doesn't make any sense.

[gtjoseph]

And shouldn't a breaking change have been mentioned in https://github.blog/changelog/ ?

[lengau]

Installing a newer major version that breaks compatibility with a huge number of projects is something that really should be done with an actions/setup-cmake action, not put directly into the images, especially for an OS that includes cmake in its repositories.

[lengau]

@alexbal45 Windows doesn't include cmake in a default repository. AFAIK MacOS doesn't either.

See my comment here: #12958 (comment)