[ci] switch from macos-14 to macos-15 runners #7476

Merged
jameslamb opened 4:42pm on September 29, 2026 wanted to merge 33 Ξ” into microsoft/lightgbm main from
ci/fix-macos-14-jobs

Pull Request Overview

  • Opened on September 29, 2026
  • Status Merged
  • Commit count 2 with first commit September 29, 2026

Total Delta

33 Total Diff Delta

Open Days

Open 4 weekdays

Test Delta

0 Diff Delta in Test Files
Breakdown by Phase

How long has this pull request spent in each phase of its lifecycle?

Fraction of total time Business days Phase
 
0.0 days Authoring 2 commits before pull request opened for review
 
0.1 days Awaiting first review
 
0.2 days Revising work with 0 commits in response to 1 review that left 0 comments
Set up deploy tracking to begin tracking full PR start-to-deploy times

Total time for pull request 0.3 business days from first commit authored to merge
Deploy tracking has not been set up

Author avatar

[ci] switch from macos-14 to macos-15 runners

CI is currently blocked because of some brew install failures like this:

==> make install MANDIR=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/openssl@3/3.6.4_1/share/man MANSUFF

Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /opt/homebrew
Could not symlink bin/openssl
Target /opt/homebrew/bin/openssl
is a symlink belonging to [email protected]. You can unlink it:
brew unlink [email protected]

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
brew link --overwrite openssl@3

To list all files that would be deleted:
brew link --overwrite openssl@3 --dry-run

Possible conflicting files are:
/opt/homebrew/bin/openssl -> /opt/homebrew/opt/[email protected]/bin/openssl

(build link)

Things like this are going to be more frequently now that macOS 14 (Sonoma) is considered a "Tier 3" platform for Homebrew:

This proposes just updating all uses of macos-14 runners to macos-15.

Notes for Reviewers

We'll be forced to do this soon anyway

GitHub considers the macos-14 runners deprecated and plans to fully shut them down on November 2nd, 2026: https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/13518

We can still target older macOS APIs

For now, let's try to continue supporting a wide range of macOS versions:

https://github.com/lightgbm-org/LightGBM/blob/f4777388bd0c580719feb03469e80f767dc9b09f/.ci/test.sh#L42-L46

Until XCode stops supporting the oldest versions in this range or there is some other specific reason to move that floor.

PR was closed without comments.