Performance improvements to sparse MST solver - #3118

Node.js 20 is deprecated. The following actions target Node.js 20 but are being forced to run on Node.js 24: actions/labeler@8558fd74291d67161a8a78ce36a881fa63b766a9. For more information see: https://github.blog/changelog/2025-09-19-deprecation-of-node-20-on-github-actions-runners/