Is it possible to use Intel-based Macos-14 runner in an OSS project?

[horenmar]

I just tried moving Catch2 to newer runners from macos-12, but using macos-14-large fails with

The job was not started because recent account payments have failed or your spending limit needs to be increased. Please check the 'Billing & plans' section in your settings.

I assume that this is because I on the free tier and don't have enabled payments for runners.

Given that plain macos-14 is now Arm based, is it still possible to get Intel MacOS runners for OSS projects, or is that discontinued?

[Cheesebaron]

I think all the -large and -xlarge runners follow a slightly different pricing scheme and are not available for OSS projects unless you insert credit card.

https://github.com/actions/runner-images?tab=readme-ov-file#available-images

The list here nicely explains what is available and macos-14 and macos-14-large still seems to be intel, while the macos-14-xlarge variants are arm64.

Is it because you want to run benchmarks for Catch2 or why is it that you specifically require Intel runners?

[horenmar]

macos-14 is definitely an Arm machine, are you looking at macos-13?

And the reason to have both is simple; AppleClang behaves differently when targeting Intel and Arm machines.

[Cheesebaron]

Ah yes, you are right. it is the -large that is still intel and macos-14 is arm.

But still, since pricing is different for -large and -xlarge I don't think you can run on these for free.

[horenmar]

Well, yes, I found out that I can't use these for free by the fact that the action errors out.

The question is, is there an alternative Intel Macos-14 runner, or are there plans to have one?

[vaishalipawar1490]

Hi @horenmar,
For macOS 14, Intel-based runners like macos-14-large are only available to users with GitHub Team or Enterprise plans, so they aren't free for everyone. If you need free access to Intel-based macOS runners, you can use macos-13 or macos-13-large instead.