61–70 of 450 posts
Interesting that some version of Python will still retain a default status, while Perl and Ruby are both being removed from the default install. Congratulations, Python 3!
So, what's the point of using Macs as a better Linux, if they are continuing to strip out the parts of Linux that are useful? Might as well use WSL or Cygwin and save a bunch of money.
There are many reasons that people choose to use a Mac, mostly when people say “Linux” in this context they mean: posix shell, and the ability to run most other posix software (eg most Linux commandline apps).
It’s not because it has every interpreter on earth installed by default. In fact as others have said the current status is that the system installs of python and ruby are old because updating them breaks software. The solution is to make them not part of the OS so if software does want to use an interpreter they don’t lock the shipping version again.
Linux doesn’t have this problem because it’s assumed that your update process comes from a central repository of all the apps so if you (say) update python you also pull recompiled updates of all the apps you have that depend on python. Software installation on a Mac is generally not all from one source, and even if it were Apple doesn’t have the ability to recompile other developer’s apps.
Does this include AppleScript and the Javascript runtime for AppleScripts? They reference Script Editor in the section above, so I'm assuming they're safe. Also, what's the best way to install homebrew if you don't have a system-level ruby? The current installer is a ruby script. Is it possible to get some sort of ruby-bootstrap that can install homebrew and a homebrewed ruby?
Fucking finally ! Between this and deprecating Bash [1], I'm glad macOS is dropping all these obsolete packages it's been including (Emacs soon?). Their antiquity mean they're more of a hindrance to proper development than help. Now, if they'd officially endorse one open-source packaging solution as an alternative, I'd be fully satisfied. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20090193
MacPorts has or had semi-official status. It was hosted by macOS Forge, which was an official Apple site that included other projects such as XQuartz. I'm unclear on the current status.
Probably the right call - many of them don’t have abi or api stability guarantees, or in the case of python needlessly broke backwards compatibility that is still causing pain today. Apple used to ship an incredibly old version of OpenSSL because people used its API which was not ABI stable. Even getting rid of it was a nontrivial amount of work. The lack of care about API&ABI stability in developer facing open sourc…
Compared to (former) Microsoft, I don't think Apple spends anywhere near the amount of effort MS does on backwards compatibility.
You can create a single .exe that will work on any Windows starting from Windows 95 - nearly 25 years. In that timespan, Apple changed CPU architectures twice, and their OS architecture once. If you're willing to restrict yourself to 32-bit Windows, which can run Win16 and DOS apps too, then it goes back to the early 80s.
With brew as the de-facto package manager for macOS this is a great move. Having Python and Ruby bundled with macOS is confusing when trying to install "regular" versions of the software through brew or other methods. Because the default installation can't updated without updating the OS, the system versions are not useful for most developers.
I don't understand why everyone is so excited about this. I don't like using brew. I use a Mac because things just work. It was annoying that the system versions were old, but most of the time they were still workable. To me, this is another (admittedly small) thing I liked about the Mac that's going away.
Probably the right call - many of them don’t have abi or api stability guarantees, or in the case of python needlessly broke backwards compatibility that is still causing pain today. Apple used to ship an incredibly old version of OpenSSL because people used its API which was not ABI stable. Even getting rid of it was a nontrivial amount of work. The lack of care about API&ABI stability in developer facing open sourc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Python and pip just being there is a huge advantage for newbies. I really think that part of programming is constantly ignored because all the decision-makers are not newbies.
AFAIK, macOS comes with Python 2.7 and without pip. For any serious, modern , Python development you need to install Python 3 yourself.