Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
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Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#2About bloody time!
Apple don't keep their scripting languages updated. For example, macOS Mojave 10.14.6 ships with perl 5, version 18, subversion 4 (v5.18.4) in /usr/bin/perl; but my homebrew setup provides perl 5, version 30, subversion 0 (v5.30.0).
(And for those who don't know perl, it's been semi-permanently pinned at "perl 5" as a major version number for about 20 years due to the existence of perl 6, which is effectively a different language—as different as C++ is from C—so those minor version number differences are as significant as a major version number change in another language.)
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#3If I use homebrew or macports to install the latest versions of these languages, are their runtimes included? Just asking.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#4If I use homebrew or macports to install the latest versions of these languages, are their runtimes included? Just asking.
Yes, basically this news means "Ruby, python and Perl may not be preinstallled, install them yourself".
It's not a big deal for users of Homebrew or other package managers.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#5Previous discussion 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20109469.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#6If I use homebrew or macports to install the latest versions of these languages, are their runtimes included? Just asking.
Yes, basically this news means "Ruby, python and Perl may not be preinstallled, install them yourself". It's not a big deal for users of Homebrew or other package managers.
It’s a big deal for Homebrew, which is written in Ruby and uses the version shipped with macOS to install itself.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#7If I use homebrew or macports to install the latest versions of these languages, are their runtimes included? Just asking.
Yes, basically this news means "Ruby, python and Perl may not be preinstallled, install them yourself". It's not a big deal for users of Homebrew or other package managers.
But if they don’t include Ruby in future versions of macOS or Xcode then you’ll have to install that before run big Homebrew...
That being said, this is a good thing. By pinning the interpreters to ancient versions Apple is maintaining this legacy code that is often replaced by homebrew/Macports anyway.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#8About bloody time! Apple don't keep their scripting languages updated. For example, macOS Mojave 10.14.6 ships with perl 5, version 18, subversion 4 (v5.18.4) in /usr/bin/perl; but my homebrew setup provides perl 5, version 30, subversion 0 (v5.30.0). (And for those who don't know perl, it's been semi-permanently pinned at "perl 5" as a major version number for about 20 years due to the existence of perl 6, which is…
Do you use Perl a lot? I haven't used it extensively since probably 2004.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#9scripts are just text files that can do a great deal when executed by the scripting language runtime
Microsoft have done a lot in Windows 10 to counter PowerShell malware
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/poshchap/2015/10/16/secu...
https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2017/12/04/windows-d...
It’s not foolproof but it copes with many common attacks. It’s surprising Apple hasn’t taken this approach.
Re: Apple to Deprecate Scripting Languages in Future Versions of macOS
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, basically this news means "Ruby, python and Perl may not be preinstallled, install them yourself". It's not a big deal for users of Homebrew or other package managers.
It’s a big deal for Homebrew, which is written in Ruby and uses the version shipped with macOS to install itself.
The bootstrap script can just as easily download a ruby binary as its first step.