Azure Pipelines is currently investing in updating and removing some of its hosted images. These changes are designed to ensure we are able to better serve the needs of our growing user base. As a result, a set of exciting changes are coming during the months of January – March 2020.

Changes coming in January 2020

During the week of January 27, 2020, the ubuntu-latest image will be updated to point to ubuntu-18.04. Currently, the ubuntu-latest image points to ubuntu-16.04. This does not change our support for ubuntu-16.04. You can continue to use ubuntu-16.04 by directly referencing this label in your YAML and classic pipelines.

Changes coming in February 2020

On February 3, 2020, we will roll out a new image – macOS-10.15(Catalina). With the recent stable release of macOS Catalina, we have heard numerous requests to support building with this version. We are excited to deliver this functionality.

During the week of February 10, 2020, the macOS-latest image will be updated to point to macOS-10.15. Currently, the macOS-latest image points to macOS-10.14. This does not change our support for macOS-10.14. You can continue to use macOS-10.14 by directly refernecing this label in your YAML and classic pipelines.

Changes coming in March 2020

On March 23, 2020, we will remove Windows Server 2012 R2 with Visual Studio 2015(vs2015-win2012r2), macOS High Sierra 10.13 (macOS-10.13), and Windows Server Core 1803 (win1803) from our hosted pools. Removing these images allows us to continue rolling out newer image versions in an efficient manner. To learn more about the removal of these images, check out our blog post on removing older images in Azure Pipelines hosted pools.