
So far #macOS Mojave ships with Python 2.7.10 - sslalready
https://twitter.com/llanga/status/1004049256053764097
======
ambivalence
Hey everyone, tweet author here. This was posted in June. In the 2.5 months
since that tweet Apple apparently did update Python on Mojave to 2.7.15.

Could an admin take this submission down or flag it?

Why this blew up just today is very surprising to me.

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sslalready
Hi. I found your thread while looking for more information on (the lack of)
Python 3 on Mojave.

As a developer I’m annoyed with having to install third party packages to get
access to Python 3. The software Apple ships is also code-signed, which is
important to some organizations which relies on binary whitelisting (e.g.
github.com/google/santa). Software from Homebrew or Anaconda are typically not
code-signed.

I was hoping that perhaps bringing the old Python 2 interpreter up here could
lead to more radars for the inclusions of a recent Python 3.x release in the
base system.

~~~
kjeetgill
No major Linux distro besides arch ships with 3 as it's base either. For app
development 3 is good but the base platform ecosystems are way harder to move.

~~~
sslalready
Not sure if you would agree to call them major distros but at least Fedora 23
(Nov, 2015) and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Apr, 2018) ships with Python 3 in their
base.

~~~
kjeetgill
Ah,I guessthis ledme to believe that I wasn't. I suppose a better phrasing
might be that everything stop ships python as python 2 still.

httpss://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FinalizingFedoraSwitchtoPython3

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hprotagonist
That “system python” will be py2 for a long while to come (except on Arch and
RHEL) isn’t terribly surprising.

That they aren’t shipping 2.7.15 is kind of egregious.

I ignore system python entirely and roll my own, but cluttering up the system
with old code from day 1 isn’t great.

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bluejekyll
Here’s a serious question, who relies on system tools (besides the OS itself)?

The concept of default installations of tools has always been awkward.
Invariably, to create a stable system around your software you want to control
versions so that you can have predictable results.

I find Nix very appealing (though haven’t used it yet) in this regard.
Similary, it’s why we’ve started using Docker to package up all the
dependencies we need around the software.

A question I have is: should Apple just say, this is a tool for the OS only,
and expect users to install the dependencies they need? Maybe even support
that by adopting something like the Nix package manager for common
dependencies across applications?

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2trill2spill
Sounds about right, Apple doesn't put much effort in to keeping their open
source command line tools up to date.

~~~
hs86
This reminds me of [http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-
purge/](http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/)

Usually, there are alternatives to these former GPLv2, now GPL3 tools and I
wonder why Apple just does not replace them.

~~~
1over137
Perhaps Apple wants them to wither and die. After all, they don't provide them
on iOS, tvOS, etc. Letting Python die out brings it closer to iOS unification.

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rbanffy
That's pretty bad. I don't think there is any binary compatibility that would
be broken with having Python 3 as the standard one.

It took a long time for Red Hat and Canonical because a lot of the OS was
written in Python 2.x, but Apple doesn't have that excuse.

~~~
CJefferson
Well, almost every single user who has written a Python 2 program, or program
which uses Python 2 internally, would find their code broken in
/usr/bin/python moved to Python 3.

I wouldn't be surprised if Apple just stays on Python 2 forever. Apple already
does some patching to their copy of python when they upgrade OS, and it would
require a fairly small amount of manpower to keep Python 2 running forever.

~~~
curun1r
It's funny how when it comes to the actual hardware, Apple is among the first
to adopt and customers are often forced to buy dongles and new peripherals,
but when it comes to installing a major version of Python that was released a
decade ago this December, Apple is happy to not push people.

~~~
CJefferson
Because I imagine Apple sees value in pushing new hardware, but not in pushing
Python 3.

~~~
rbanffy
I hope they made a lot of money from the dongle division.

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sashk
My bug report about inclusion of Python 3 was closed as duplicate, with
original still open. Same for request to update to 2.7.13 (at time of High
Sierra beta). Didn't bother to submit new bug this year.

~~~
1over137
My bug to 'update from python 2 to 3' was duped to rdar://21398921 (which,
based on the chronology of the numbers, would be around June 2015). Were both
yours duped to the same?

~~~
sashk
Yes, mine was duped to the same bug as yours.

