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macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

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Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#151

Post by saagarjha »

m463 wrote: post #77
new_realist wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does OSX offer reasonable container technology? chroot?

I think apple fundamentally does not understand containers. All the interesting container stuff is on other platforms. It might be out of fear, maybe because apple doesn't want macos to be virtualized. It would be really nice to have say the current xcode in one container and a dev xcode in another. It would be nice to farm work out to a lot of machines. or a dockerfile like: FROM macos:10.14 RUN installer xcode... R…

> apple doesn't want macos to be virtualized.

The macOS EULA explicitly allows macOS to be virtualized if you do it on a Mac running macOS.

> It would be really nice to have say the current xcode in one container and a dev xcode in another.

This is the entire point behind xcode-select. I currently have Xcode-beta and Xcode on side-by-side on my machine, and they pretty much coexist.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#152

Post by photojosh »

SeanLuke wrote: post #87
arvinsim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning how to install Python and Pip should be part of the learning process for newbies.

I'm sure that my kids will certainly love to hear that they have to learn Unix in order to learn a build system in order to try out Python. It's all part of the "learning process for newbies."

Good grief. What's wrong with going to www.python.org/downloads/ and clicking the big button at the top that says "Download the latest version for Mac OS X"?

If you can't even download an installer and run it, then yeah, maybe not quite ready for programming either.

Please forgive my snark, but this would be exactly my thought process as a reasonably competent computer user who wanted to learn Python.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#153

Post by saagarjha »

kn0where wrote: post #124
fooblitzky_bias wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking, right? Brew is NOT the de-facto package manager, macoports is. Learn what "de-facto" means. Brew is a fucking trainwreck that shits all over "/" and has a tendency to break existing critical features while failing to stay up to date. I wouldn't touch it again with a 10 foot pole, and actively discourage people from using it.

On the other hand, actually trying to use MacPorts when one is accustomed to package managers like apt is an exercise in extreme patience.

Interestingly, I feel the opposite: Homebrew acts much more like a binary distribution service than a package manager.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#154

Post by dcosson »

Waterluvian wrote: post #50
DividableMiddle wrote: post #6

This has been a topic brought up internally at Apple many times over the past decade. Glad to see it finally moving forward. Although I see the benefits to having a system-version of these packages.. if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized.

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.

It's honestly terrible for newbies. If they try to use it, there's no pip included. So then they easy_install all their libraries which installs things into different places than most python devs will be used to. Or they easy_install pip first. But even still, everything is installing to system paths, so when they try to install things it fails with permission errors. They find a stack overflow post that says just "sudo" everything and they go to town. And there's no way to reset anything when it gets borked either because it's the system install.

Compare that to "brew install python". Now you have the most up to date version, with the right permissions for your user, that you can always brew uninstall and reinstall later if you need a different version or a clean install.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#155

Post by sametmax »

olliej wrote: post #113
kpcyrd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're referring to the python2->python3 change, this was a pretty important one. Having a string type that isn't required to have valid encoding is an awful idea.

And rather than just accepting that was what you had and accepting that you occasionally had to deal with that (as JavaScript did), they decided to cause a decade of problems that aren’t going to go away just because they’ve now declared python 2.7 dead.

Because of that, Javascript is now a pile of accumulated technical debt and it one of the worst language you can dev in. Hell, it has no type and still 4 ways to declare a variable.

In fact it's so terrible the most popular JS projects are actually project to avoid writing JS or emulate features that don't exist in one JS implementation or another (typescript, babel, JSX, webpack, polyfills, etc)

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#156

Post by saagarjha »

fooblitzky_bias wrote: post #115
snowoutside wrote: post #51

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.

You're joking, right? Brew is NOT the de-facto package manager, macoports is. Learn what "de-facto" means. Brew is a fucking trainwreck that shits all over "/" and has a tendency to break existing critical features while failing to stay up to date. I wouldn't touch it again with a 10 foot pole, and actively discourage people from using it.

Homebrew is the de-facto package manager on macOS because it is so widely used. It might not be the one started by Apple engineers, but it is certainly the more popular of the two.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#157

Post by ynx »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #110
DividableMiddle wrote: post #6

This has been a topic brought up internally at Apple many times over the past decade. Glad to see it finally moving forward. Although I see the benefits to having a system-version of these packages.. if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized.

> if you're doing anything serious for production then the environment should be containerized. What do you mean?

at the very least, virtualenv (for Python) to isolate the library dependencies from the system libraries.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#158

Post by sametmax »

larkost wrote: post #34
ihuman wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you read more into my question than what I meant. I was asking literally about the best way to install it was without a system level ruby. Once you have homebrew, you can install ruby; but what about before that? Download and install ruby from ruby-lang.org, install homebrew and a brewed ruby, then uninstall the one from ruby-lang.org?

At least for Python the standard .pkg's available from python.org have always been very useful for me. Especially since you can install as many versions as you want simultaneously since they install in separate folders. As a tester who used to have to keep installs of lots of versions this was very helpful. I should know the situation for Ruby as well... but don't remember anymore.

Yeah I don't get the trend to install it with brew since it's so easy to use the official installer.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#159

Post by saagarjha »

rgovostes wrote: post #31
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #15

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.

MacPorts was started by Apple engineers as part of OpenDarwin and then spun off into a community project like the rest of the projects on macOS Forge, and just like the other projects it is still worked on in part by Apple engineers.

Re: macOS deprecating scripting language runtimes, including Python, Ruby, and Perl

#160

Post by unilynx »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #122
Twisell wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They sure could, but is it worthy to maintain an alternative package and deployment system for which you have no use yourself? Will employees be careful and committed to something useless for their jobs? They previously deprecated Java runtime for similar reasons. And I can’t really blame them, roadmap is crystal clear now, they prefer to assign ressources to develop Swift/Swift UI and improve tooling for native code…

I agree overall, but I do think it's a little sad that you can no longer open a Terminal and start writing Python. I think this legitimately matters in terms of increasing overall tech and programming literacy. Mind, there's still a command line and shell built-in, which I consider far more important.

Its not like the rest of the terminal is friendly to newbies. An online ‘jsfiddle’ like environment suitable for newbies (with a bit of inline syntax hints without turning into a full IDE) would be more useful to get people to start playing with programming
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