Build suddenly failed on Github Actions for MacOS

1 min read

I have started to add some of my projects to Github Actions in stead of building everything locally with Jenkins. Github Actions is free for Open Source projects, and it's a convenient way for me to check that everything works on Linux, Windows and MacOS.

To guard against problems with newer versions of boost libraries or compilers I have configured Github Actions to rebuild my projects every month even if I don't update anything.

May first, all my projects failed building on MacOS. The problem seems to be that they have upgraded their runners from X64 to ARM64 hardware. I use an action, aminya/setup-cpp@v1 to install the the C++ compiler, CMake and Ninja before the build. It seems like it's broken for the runners Github Actions use for MacOS now.

The solution was do remove the compiler name from the matrix for MacOS, and add a new step where I simply use homebrew to install a recent llvm compiler.

This is the new workflow for one of the projects:

 1name: CI
 2on:
 3  push:
 4  pull_request:
 5  schedule:
 6    - cron: '0 0 1 * *' # This line schedules the workflow to run at 00:00 on the first day of every month
 7jobs:
 8  build:
 9    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
10    strategy:
11      matrix:
12        include:
13          - os: ubuntu-latest
14            compiler: gcc
15          - os: ubuntu-latest
16            compiler: clang
17          - os: windows-latest
18            compiler: msvc
19          - os: macos-latest
20            compiler:
21
22    steps:
23      - name: Checkout code
24        uses: actions/checkout@v4
25        with:
26          submodules: true
27
28      - name: Cache
29        uses: actions/cache@v4
30        with:
31          path: |
32            ~/vcpkg
33            ./build/vcpkg_installed
34            ${{ env.HOME }}/.cache/vcpkg/archives
35            ${{ env.XDG_CACHE_HOME }}/vcpkg/archives
36            ${{ env.LOCALAPPDATA }}\vcpkg\archives
37            ${{ env.APPDATA }}\vcpkg\archives            
38          key: ${{ runner.os }}-${{ matrix.compiler }}-${{ env.BUILD_TYPE }}-${{ hashFiles('**/CMakeLists.txt') }}-${{ hashFiles('./vcpkg.json')}}
39          restore-keys: |
40            ${{ runner.os }}-${{ env.BUILD_TYPE }}-            
41
42      - name: Setup Cpp
43        uses: aminya/setup-cpp@v1
44        with:
45          compiler: ${{ matrix.compiler }}
46          vcvarsall: ${{ contains(matrix.os, 'windows') }}
47          cmake: true
48          ninja: true
49          vcpkg: true
50          cppcheck: false
51
52      - name: Install compiler for Macos
53        if: startsWith(matrix.os, 'macos')
54        run: |
55          brew install llvm          
56
57      - name: Prepare the PATH
58        run: |
59            if [[ "${{ runner.os }}" == "Windows" ]]; then
60                echo "$env:USERPROFILE\vcpkg" >> $GITHUB_PATH
61                echo "$env:USERPROFILE\ninja" >> $GITHUB_PATH
62            else
63                echo "$HOME/vcpkg" >> $GITHUB_PATH
64                echo "$HOME/ninja" >> $GITHUB_PATH
65            fi            
66        shell: bash
67
68      - name: Install dependencies
69        run: |
70          vcpkg install          
71
72      - name: Build project
73        shell: bash
74        run: |
75          if [ -d build ]; then
76            echo "Build dir exists"
77            ls -la build
78          else
79            mkdir build
80          fi
81          pushd build
82          cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G "Ninja" -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
83          cmake --build .
84          popd          
85
86      - name: Run Unit Tests
87        run: |
88          pushd build
89          ctest -C Release
90          popd          
91        shell: bash
92

This has a new step, Install compiler for Macos that works.