Lab: Runner - MacOS Latest

Introduction

In this lab, you will create and execute a GitHub Actions workflow that runs on the macos-latest GitHub-hosted runner. This lab demonstrates how to display macOS operating system information and print a custom message.

Estimated Duration: 15–20 minutes

Instructions

Step 1: Set up your repository

  1. Navigate to your GitHub repository where you want to create the workflow.

    • If you don’t have a repository yet, create a new one by clicking + > New repository.

Step 2: Create the workflow file

  1. In your repository, click the Code tab (if not already there).

  2. Navigate to the .github folder. If it doesn’t exist:

    • Click Add file > Create new file
    • Name the new file: .github/workflows/runner-macos-latest.yml

  3. Paste the following YAML content into the file:

    name: Runner - MacOS Latest

on: workflow_dispatch

jobs:
  run:
    runs-on: macos-latest
    steps:
      - run: echo "This is a message from MacOS latest runner"
      - name: Display OS Information
        run: |
          system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType

  4. Click Commit new file to save the workflow.

Step 3: Understand the workflow

  1. Workflow name: Runner - MacOS Latest
  2. Trigger: workflow_dispatch – the workflow must be manually triggered.
  3. Runner: Uses GitHub-hosted macos-latest virtual environment.

  4. Steps:

    • The first step prints a custom message.
    • The second step runs system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType to display macOS version and system details.

Step 4: Trigger the workflow manually

  1. Go to the Actions tab in your repository.
  2. Click on Runner - MacOS Latest from the workflow list.
  3. Click the Run workflow button and confirm the action.

Step 5: View the output

  1. Once the workflow is running, click on the latest run listed.
  2. Click on the run job to view details.

  3. Expand the logs to see:

    • The custom echo message.
    • System details such as macOS version, build, and kernel version from system_profiler.

Summary

In this lab, you created and executed a GitHub Actions workflow using the macos-latest runner. You used this environment to print system information, helping you understand what operating system is used when running jobs on GitHub’s macOS runners.

Additional Resources