Simple checkout action failing need help debugging first action

[Fran-B]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Actions Checkout

Discussion Details

I created my first action containing multiple jobs. The first being a "setup" job that others depend upon. That "setup" job is failing with a complaint about Node.js version when I am not specifying anything that has to do with JS. The relevant section of the action is:

jobs:

  setup:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    #runs:
    #  using: 'node24'
    #  main: 'main.js'
    #runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - name: Check out repository code
      uses: actions/checkout@v6
    - name: Set up JDK 21
      uses: actions/setup-java@v4
      with:
        java-version: '21'
        #distribution: 'temurin'
        #java-package: jdk

  build:
    needs: setup
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:

The action looks like it is running as expected, but the "setup" job fails with the following message:

Node.js 20 is deprecated. The following actions target Node.js 20 but are being forced to run on Node.js 24: actions/setup-java@v4. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/

Although the provided URL has an explanation of the "20 vs. 24" issue, I do not see the actual relevance to this action since nothing is directing it to do anything that is not default.

The relevant steps were originally copied from the "Java using Ant" template.
I changed the "checkout@v4" to request v6 after researching this same error on the first run.
My "on" statement uses a "workflow_dispatch" and that all seems to be working fine.

You can see some of the other things that I tried without success in the comments.

[Fran-B]

Sorry, it looks like I was confused about the reason for failure. The "Node.js" thing was just an annoying warning.
It seems that the actual error was the need to specify a "distribution" for the "java-version". I am not sure why that is required or how I would know the available choices.
What I do know is that when I specify 'temurin', my "javac --version" step, in job "build" returns "javac 17.0.19" rather than 21. That job is currently incomplete.
So, wrong version. Therefore, I am not where I would expect.

Why is that happening?