4 ms·

If I use homebrew or macports to install the latest versions of these languages, are their runtimes included? Just asking.

martius 7y ago
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.
- polpo 7y ago
  It’s a big deal for Homebrew, which is written in Ruby and uses the version shipped with macOS to install itself.
  - jakobegger 7y ago
    I think that telling users to execute a shell command to install software is not the smartest idea in any case (eg. no way to verify signatures of installed software) A standard installer package would be much better.
    - hk__2 7y ago
      > I think that telling users to execute a shell command to install software is not the smartest idea in any case (eg. no way to verify signatures of installed software) Installing via a shell command has nothing to do with the (in)ability to verify signatures. You aren’t more protected running a random installer package than an auditable shell script from the official Homebrew repo. Also, Homebrew supports more installation methods including cloning the git repo by yourself or un-taring an archive.
      - jakobegger 7y ago
        Installers are signed, scripts piped from curl to ruby are not. Homebrew circumvents all the protections built into macOS (like Gatekeeper / Xprotect etc) for convenience. I don't think this method for distributing software has much of a future.
  - frutiger 7y ago
    The bootstrap script can just as easily download a ruby binary as its first step.
  - blumomo 7y ago
    I'm curious why this is a big deal. Naively, I'd suppose that they change their current install script from "ruby: download and install brew" to: "shell: download and install ruby, then install brew". They could even have their shell script download a package that installs both.
  - Redoubts 7y ago
    They already bring in ruby for installs on ancient MacOS, they'll just do the same here when the time comes. https://twitter.com/mistydemeo/status/1135934513173811200 https://twitter.com/mistydemeo/status/1135934513173811200
  - hhas01 7y ago
    Don’t be daft. If the Homebrew team aren’t already busting ass to rewrite brew in Objective-C, and negotiating to get it distributed on AppStore or—ideally—included in Xcode as standard, then they’ll have no-one but themselves to blame when they utterly fail to capitalize on the massive market opportunity Apple has handed them here. Believe me, porting brew is a nothing price and the simplest step by far. This is a once-in-a-product’s-lifetime chance for a proven FOSS platform not only to grab ten million new users but to influence a global platform vendor’s direction too. Fail to seize this opportunity or blow it execution, and you won’t get another (I speak from painful experience here).
- IHLayman 7y ago
  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.
- qalmakka 7y ago
  The only issue I see is that they'll have to change how brew bootstrap itself, but it should be trivial for them to just make the installer download a minimal ruby runtime. One good upside from this deprecation is that lots of scripts naively containing "#!/bin/python" and such without invoking them through /usr/bin/env will stop working on macOS, which is good.
- acdha 7y ago
  This really needs to be in every article about this: you’d want to use Homebrew anyway to get supported versions so this is a prod to stop trying to avoid it. Especially with things like Python 2.7 where some of the latter point releases had non-trivial improvements for TLS, etc. it really wasn’t worth it staying behind — and I say that as someone who used to ship Mac management tools using Python many years ago.
deleted 7y ago
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martius 7y ago

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.

polpo 7y ago
It’s a big deal for Homebrew, which is written in Ruby and uses the version shipped with macOS to install itself.
- jakobegger 7y ago
  I think that telling users to execute a shell command to install software is not the smartest idea in any case (eg. no way to verify signatures of installed software) A standard installer package would be much better.
  - hk__2 7y ago
    > I think that telling users to execute a shell command to install software is not the smartest idea in any case (eg. no way to verify signatures of installed software) Installing via a shell command has nothing to do with the (in)ability to verify signatures. You aren’t more protected running a random installer package than an auditable shell script from the official Homebrew repo. Also, Homebrew supports more installation methods including cloning the git repo by yourself or un-taring an archive.
    - jakobegger 7y ago
      Installers are signed, scripts piped from curl to ruby are not. Homebrew circumvents all the protections built into macOS (like Gatekeeper / Xprotect etc) for convenience. I don't think this method for distributing software has much of a future.
- frutiger 7y ago
  The bootstrap script can just as easily download a ruby binary as its first step.
- blumomo 7y ago
  I'm curious why this is a big deal. Naively, I'd suppose that they change their current install script from "ruby: download and install brew" to: "shell: download and install ruby, then install brew". They could even have their shell script download a package that installs both.
- Redoubts 7y ago
  They already bring in ruby for installs on ancient MacOS, they'll just do the same here when the time comes. https://twitter.com/mistydemeo/status/1135934513173811200 https://twitter.com/mistydemeo/status/1135934513173811200
- hhas01 7y ago
  Don’t be daft. If the Homebrew team aren’t already busting ass to rewrite brew in Objective-C, and negotiating to get it distributed on AppStore or—ideally—included in Xcode as standard, then they’ll have no-one but themselves to blame when they utterly fail to capitalize on the massive market opportunity Apple has handed them here. Believe me, porting brew is a nothing price and the simplest step by far. This is a once-in-a-product’s-lifetime chance for a proven FOSS platform not only to grab ten million new users but to influence a global platform vendor’s direction too. Fail to seize this opportunity or blow it execution, and you won’t get another (I speak from painful experience here).
IHLayman 7y ago
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.
qalmakka 7y ago
The only issue I see is that they'll have to change how brew bootstrap itself, but it should be trivial for them to just make the installer download a minimal ruby runtime. One good upside from this deprecation is that lots of scripts naively containing "#!/bin/python" and such without invoking them through /usr/bin/env will stop working on macOS, which is good.
acdha 7y ago
This really needs to be in every article about this: you’d want to use Homebrew anyway to get supported versions so this is a prod to stop trying to avoid it. Especially with things like Python 2.7 where some of the latter point releases had non-trivial improvements for TLS, etc. it really wasn’t worth it staying behind — and I say that as someone who used to ship Mac management tools using Python many years ago.

deleted 7y ago

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