Prepare for GitHub Actions Visual Studio 2026 rollout in `windows-latest`

[MikeMcC399]

What would you like?

Monitor rollout of Visual Studio 2026 in GitHub Actions' Windows runner images and ensure CI tests continue to work.

Why is this needed?

• Windows Server 2025 with Visual Studio 2026 is now available as a public beta actions/runner-images#13638 announces Windows Server 2025 with Visual Studio 2026 using the tag windows-2025-vs2026

• Windows Server 2025 with Visual Studio 2026 image now available for GitHub-hosted runners (Feb 5, 2026) states:

  A new Windows runner image with Visual Studio 2026 is now available in public preview. This dedicated image runs alongside the current windows-2025 image, providing a safe validation path ahead of the default Windows image migration. Visual Studio 2026 will be integrated into the windows-2025 image when it reaches general availability on May 4, 2026.

  You can test against Visual Studio 2026 without disrupting existing pipelines, identify and fix compatibility issues on your timeline, maintain fallback options (like windows-2022) if needed, and plan migrations with full visibility into the upgrade timeline.

  To use the the new runner image, update the runs-on: target in your YAML workflow file to windows-2025-vs2026. For additional information on the available windows runner images, visit our doucmentation (sic).

• Workflow ci.yml uses windows-latest

• Repo / workflows are not compatible with Visual Studio 2026

CI test results

GitHub Runner Image	Node.js 20	Node.js 22	Node.js 24
windows-2022	fail	pass	fail
windows-2025	pass	pass	fail
windows-2025-vs2026	fail	fail	fail

windows-latest is currently set to windows-2025 and planned for transition to windows-2025-vs2026 on May 4, 2026

Suggestions

Short term

In workflow ci.yml

• drop support for Node.js 20 with EOL transition on 2026-04-30 and then
• downgrade from windows-latest to windows-2022

Medium term

Investigate possibilities:

• to migrate to testing under Visual Studio 2026 on Windows
• to support successful CI testing for Node.js 24 (see also Make ncc compatible with Node.js 24 for Windows (Rev2) #1308)

[styfle]

Repo / workflows are not compatible with Visual Studio 2026

Do you know why? Seems like it would be better to make a proper fix to support the latest runner rather than pin the older version.

[MikeMcC399]

Repo / workflows are not compatible with Visual Studio 2026

Do you know why? Seems like it would be better to make a proper fix to support the latest runner rather than pin the older version.

The suggestion was for a short-term and then a medium-term fix. If somebody is able to carry out a migration of the dependencies so that the repo can be built using Visual Studio 2026 by May 6, 2026, then that would be fine, and the short-term fix of pinning could be skipped. I did take a look to see if I could do this, but I don't have the background related to C++ etc. It seems that there are lots of interdependencies that I don't understand.

There wasn't any help offered for the issue #1297 regarding compatibility with Node.js 24 / Windows that was open since Oct 2025, so skill / availability looks like it is an issue here.

Using ncc on https://github.com/cypress-io/github-action I've also noticed that running ncc on Windows produces output that depends on the Node.js version, and is different from what ncc produces when running under Ubuntu (where the output is independent of the Node.js version). I hadn't noticed that previously because I always prepare production work on Ubuntu.

So, all in all, Windows seems a bit tricky!