[Windows & Ubuntu] .NET 7.x will be removed from the images on December 6, 2024

[vidyasagarnimmagaddi]

Breaking changes

All the pre-cached .NET 7.x version will be removed from Windows 2019 , Windows 2022, Ubuntu 20 and Ubuntu 22 images

Target date

The rollout will start on December, 2 and will take 3-4 days to propagate the image to all the environments.

The motivation for the changes

According to our Software and image guidelines tools and versions have to be removed 6 months after they are deprecated or have reached end-of-life. The .NET 7 has reached EOL on May 14, 2024).

Possible impact

If your project depends on a pre-installed .NET 7.x it can be broken.

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 20.04
• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• macOS 12
• macOS 13
• macOS 13 Arm64
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022

Mitigation ways

To install any version in runtime you can use the following action\task:

https://github.com/actions/setup-dotnet for GH actions
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/tasks/tool/dotnet-core-tool-installer?view=azure-devops task for AzDO