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Upgrade GitHub Actions runner images to windows-2025 and install Windows SDKs #312

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Merged
Arlodotexe merged 2 commits into from
May 13, 2026
Merged

Upgrade GitHub Actions runner images to windows-2025 and install Windows SDKs #312

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2bbe828
Initial copy-over of Windows SDK installer script from 7x repo at htt…
Arlodotexe May 13, 2026
839fa23
Bumped runner to windows-2025 and added build step for Windows SDK in…
Arlodotexe May 13, 2026
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6 changes: 5 additions & 1 deletion .github/workflows/build.yml
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ env:
jobs:
# This workflow contains a single job called "Xaml-Style-Check"
Xaml-Style-Check:
runs-on: windows-2022
runs-on: windows-2025
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@Avid29 Avid29 May 13, 2026

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Do we want to consider just using windows-latest?

I know this would mean the runner could swap out from under us and disrupt the CI, but they already modify named images, and in this case an issue would more likely represent a deprecation that we should migrate from.

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@Arlodotexe Arlodotexe May 13, 2026

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We pinned the runner because we haven't had the bandwidth to be proactive about moving ourselves to the latest as it changed under us.

For now, according to the github runner images docs, we have until the next GA release to get off of windows-2022 and onto windows-2025, so that we're not rug-pulled regarding windows-2022 for the whole image when the next windows-latest GA release happens after windows-2025.

The full window is between either:

  • Reactively catching-up so we don't find ourselves using EOL runners
  • Proactively updating (to the extent we can) so that we stay ahead of whatever the next windows-latest release is.

We're currently somewhere in the middle by pinning to windows-2025-- not at risk of using EOL, not at risk of using newer images with missing dependencies.

Regarding the way github updates the dependencies in the runner itself, they only explicitly spell out their deprecation policy (dependencies can be removed when they're EOL) but past behavior heavily implies that they don't intentionally remove dependencies on existing runners otherwise.

Let's stay pinned to a specific runner version for now.


# Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
steps:
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -191,6 +191,10 @@ jobs:
copy ./tooling/.config/dotnet-tools.json ./.config/dotnet-tools.json
mkdir ./components

- name: Install Windows SDKs
shell: pwsh
run: ./tooling/Install-WindowsSdk.ps1

- name: Add msbuild to PATH
uses: microsoft/setup-msbuild@v2

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10 changes: 10 additions & 0 deletions Install-WindowsSdk.ps1
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@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@

$WinSdkTempDir = "C:\WinSdkTemp\"
$WinSdkSetupExe = "C:\WinSdkTemp\" + "WinSdkSetup.exe"

mkdir $WinSdkTempDir

$client = [System.Net.WebClient]::new()
$client.DownloadFile("https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=870807", $WinSdkSetupExe)

Start-Process -Wait $WinSdkSetupExe "/features OptionId.UWPCpp /q"
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