Preinstalled Pulumi in /usr/local/bin breaks any other version of Pulumi

[misha-drozd]

Description

Ubuntu images come with a Pulumi version preinstalled in /usr/local/bin.

Trying to use any other version of Pulumi breaks due to the way Pulumi looks for supporting binaries like pulumi-language-go: it searches $PATH first, finds older, incompatible version of these binaries, and fails.

The only way to work around it is to remove /usr/local/bin from $PATH, so that Pulumi does not find this outdated supporting library.

Platforms affected

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions - Standard Runners
• GitHub Actions - Larger Runners

Runner images affected

• Ubuntu 22.04
• Ubuntu 24.04
• macOS 13
• macOS 13 Arm64
• macOS 14
• macOS 14 Arm64
• macOS 15
• macOS 15 Arm64
• macOS 26 Arm64
• Windows Server 2019
• Windows Server 2022
• Windows Server 2025

Image version and build link

Image: ubuntu-24.04
Version: 20250907.24.1

Is it regression?

No

Expected behavior

• A job downloads a specific version of Pulumi, and runs it.
• Pulumi finds supporting binaries, such as pulumi-language-go next to the pulumi binary, and run them successfully.

Actual behavior

• A job downloads a specific version of Pulumi, and runs it.
• Pulumi looks for supporting binaries (e.g. pulumi-language-go). First it looks in $PATH, finds there an old incompatible version of pulumi-language-go, runs it, detect version mismatch and exits.

Repro steps

• Download fresh Pulumi version
• Get a Go Pulumi example
• Run Go Pulumi example

[hemanthmanga]

Hi @misha-drozd, Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. We will look into this issue and will update you after investigation.