upgrades a number of deprecated actions to their latest versions
fixes the use of the deprecated::set-output command
bumps the version of Python used to the latest available to resolve Version 3.7 was not found in the local cache errors when running on the latest Ubuntu 24.04 runners
This PR:
::set-outputcommandVersion 3.7 was not found in the local cacheerrors when running on the latest Ubuntu 24.04 runners