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Scripting languages have been removed because bundling them created problems. Apps would rely on the system version so an OS upgrade that, for example, moved to

Scripting languages have been removed because bundling them created problems. Apps would rely on the system version so an OS upgrade that, for example, moved to Python 3 would break apps. The solution is to bundle your own runtime, or install with homebrew if you’re a dev. I really don’t see Apple removing the UNIX utilities and terminal.app any time soon. Of course if they do I’ll be in the market for a new OS.

skissane 7y ago
> I really don’t see Apple removing the UNIX utilities and terminal.app any time soon. Of course if they do I’ll be in the market for a new OS. Apple needs a development environment for its own in-house OS developers to use. macOS needs to have the necessary facilities to support its own development, and also the development of iOS. So long as Apple uses macOS as its OS development platform, it is going to want to keep the UNIX components to satisfy the needs of its own OS developers.
- jedieaston 7y ago
  Although they seem to be more interested in keeping the bare minimum around versus making it easier for development, since there isn't a brew-esque thing built in (Windows at least has NuGet, albeit just like everything else in PowerShell, it's super unfriendly), the coreutils are old (this may be a licensing thing), and no Darwin containerization (which would be handy for development without having to give 2GB to Docker Desktop to get a Linux userland up). It's still fine (my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14), but they definitely have enough resources to make it, you know, "just work". which hurts especially when Microsoft is going full "developers developers developers"
  - skissane 7y ago
    > Although they seem to be more interested in keeping the bare minimum around versus making it easier for development, since there isn't a brew-esque thing built in I don't know anybody in the macOS development team, so I don't know their work practices, but it totally wouldn't surprise me if they've all installed Homebrew and use it heavily. I infer Apple's attitude as being "if you are technical enough to use Homebrew, you are technical enough to download and install it yourself". (Or MacPorts, or Fink.) If they bundle it... then people might start turning up at the Genius bar to complain "brew install X gives me an error!" > my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14 I feel the same pain... I just use Docker for Mac to run valgrind for Linux. For my personal use cases, that works fine (since I don't write much macOS-specific code)
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      I thought macports was the quasi-official option; at least, it had Apple employees as founding members of the project. Granted, it's a bit sad that there's no Official package ecosystem, although I agree with you that support issues might be at play.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        MacPorts still has Apple employees on the core team, but it is no longer an official Apple project.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Many of them don’t, actually: they just use the toolchain that Apple provides, and of course all scripts internally work with the old BSD tools so there’s really no need to install anything else unless you really like vim or GNU coreutils or whatever.
      - throwaway5810 7y ago
        Many don't, but many do.
        saagarjha 7y ago
        Yes, of course many do in fact enjoy using tools outside of Xcode and crusty shell scripts that someone else on the team wrote years ago :)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    > the coreutils are old Old, or BSD? Darwin never used GNU coreutils. > no Darwin containerization (which would be handy for development without having to give 2GB to Docker Desktop to get a Linux userland up). Do you want containers with a Darwin personality, or Linux? The latter would require either ABI emulation like FreeBSD/SmartOS/WSL1, or virtualization+glue like WSL2 on Windows. Doable, but messy and unlikely from Apple's perspective ("clean" systems, heavily Apple-centric view of the world).
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > Old, or BSD? Old and BSD. > The latter would require either ABI emulation like FreeBSD/SmartOS/WSL1, or virtualization+glue like WSL2 on Windows. Both have been “done” by third-parties. (As in: they exist; they’re not perfect.)
      - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        > Old and BSD. That is a bit interesting; the BSDs are still permissively licensed, so maybe Apple just doesn't see enough benefit to justify the effort of pulling in new features? (Or implementing features themselves, depending on how diverged the codebases are)
        saagarjha 7y ago
        I think they just don’t care. If you look at their open-source tools, they often have compile-time flags disabling code paths with better performance, probably so they can reduce the amount of code they need to worry about.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > the coreutils are old (this may be a licensing thing) Not just coreutils, this extends to all third-party GPL tools. > no Darwin containerization Not for you, but I hear the simulators do some fun things with launchd namespaces ;) > my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14 Valgrind doesn’t work because nobody has put in the time to make it work on new systems (keeping up with new macOS releases in a timely manner is extremely difficult unless an engineer is pushing for it, and AFAIK anyone who would has left the company or lost interest in doing this). Address sanitizer kind of does some of the same things, so you can try that.
api 7y ago
I doubt they'd do anything to break Macs for developers because that's one of the big market segments for Macs. It'd be like removing emojis from the iPhone. :)
- ScottFree 7y ago
  Apple has demonstrated for years now that they're not interested in the enthusiast/power user/developer market. They want the profits that come from disposable mass market devices. The switch to ARM laptops would be the perfect time to switch all of their laptops over to iPadOS.
  - armitron 7y ago
    Right, that's why they released the 6000$ Mac Pro. I'm sure iPad OS will run nicely on that.
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      Do you find that people respond positively to sarcasm?
swrobel 7y ago
Interesting paradox created here, as Homebrew is written in Ruby...
- jtvjan 7y ago
  Not really. Homebrew would just need to start installing a copy of Ruby in its install script (which is written in bash).
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Presumably the shell script that you paste into your terminal to install Homebrew will install Ruby as well…
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skissane 7y ago

> I really don’t see Apple removing the UNIX utilities and terminal.app any time soon. Of course if they do I’ll be in the market for a new OS. Apple needs a development environment for its own in-house OS developers to use. macOS needs to have the necessary facilities to support its own development, and also the development of iOS. So long as Apple uses macOS as its OS development platform, it is going to want to keep the UNIX components to satisfy the needs of its own OS developers.

jedieaston 7y ago
Although they seem to be more interested in keeping the bare minimum around versus making it easier for development, since there isn't a brew-esque thing built in (Windows at least has NuGet, albeit just like everything else in PowerShell, it's super unfriendly), the coreutils are old (this may be a licensing thing), and no Darwin containerization (which would be handy for development without having to give 2GB to Docker Desktop to get a Linux userland up). It's still fine (my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14), but they definitely have enough resources to make it, you know, "just work". which hurts especially when Microsoft is going full "developers developers developers"
- skissane 7y ago
  > Although they seem to be more interested in keeping the bare minimum around versus making it easier for development, since there isn't a brew-esque thing built in I don't know anybody in the macOS development team, so I don't know their work practices, but it totally wouldn't surprise me if they've all installed Homebrew and use it heavily. I infer Apple's attitude as being "if you are technical enough to use Homebrew, you are technical enough to download and install it yourself". (Or MacPorts, or Fink.) If they bundle it... then people might start turning up at the Genius bar to complain "brew install X gives me an error!" > my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14 I feel the same pain... I just use Docker for Mac to run valgrind for Linux. For my personal use cases, that works fine (since I don't write much macOS-specific code)
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    I thought macports was the quasi-official option; at least, it had Apple employees as founding members of the project. Granted, it's a bit sad that there's no Official package ecosystem, although I agree with you that support issues might be at play.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      MacPorts still has Apple employees on the core team, but it is no longer an official Apple project.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Many of them don’t, actually: they just use the toolchain that Apple provides, and of course all scripts internally work with the old BSD tools so there’s really no need to install anything else unless you really like vim or GNU coreutils or whatever.
    - throwaway5810 7y ago
      Many don't, but many do.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        Yes, of course many do in fact enjoy using tools outside of Xcode and crusty shell scripts that someone else on the team wrote years ago :)
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > the coreutils are old Old, or BSD? Darwin never used GNU coreutils. > no Darwin containerization (which would be handy for development without having to give 2GB to Docker Desktop to get a Linux userland up). Do you want containers with a Darwin personality, or Linux? The latter would require either ABI emulation like FreeBSD/SmartOS/WSL1, or virtualization+glue like WSL2 on Windows. Doable, but messy and unlikely from Apple's perspective ("clean" systems, heavily Apple-centric view of the world).
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > Old, or BSD? Old and BSD. > The latter would require either ABI emulation like FreeBSD/SmartOS/WSL1, or virtualization+glue like WSL2 on Windows. Both have been “done” by third-parties. (As in: they exist; they’re not perfect.)
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      > Old and BSD. That is a bit interesting; the BSDs are still permissively licensed, so maybe Apple just doesn't see enough benefit to justify the effort of pulling in new features? (Or implementing features themselves, depending on how diverged the codebases are)
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        I think they just don’t care. If you look at their open-source tools, they often have compile-time flags disabling code paths with better performance, probably so they can reduce the amount of code they need to worry about.
- deleted 7y ago
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- saagarjha 7y ago
  > the coreutils are old (this may be a licensing thing) Not just coreutils, this extends to all third-party GPL tools. > no Darwin containerization Not for you, but I hear the simulators do some fun things with launchd namespaces ;) > my only major showstopper being that valgrind just straight up isn't a thing for recent versions of OS X, with the brew version not compiling on 10.15 or 10.14 Valgrind doesn’t work because nobody has put in the time to make it work on new systems (keeping up with new macOS releases in a timely manner is extremely difficult unless an engineer is pushing for it, and AFAIK anyone who would has left the company or lost interest in doing this). Address sanitizer kind of does some of the same things, so you can try that.

api 7y ago

I doubt they'd do anything to break Macs for developers because that's one of the big market segments for Macs. It'd be like removing emojis from the iPhone. :)

ScottFree 7y ago
Apple has demonstrated for years now that they're not interested in the enthusiast/power user/developer market. They want the profits that come from disposable mass market devices. The switch to ARM laptops would be the perfect time to switch all of their laptops over to iPadOS.
- armitron 7y ago
  Right, that's why they released the 6000$ Mac Pro. I'm sure iPad OS will run nicely on that.
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    Do you find that people respond positively to sarcasm?

swrobel 7y ago

Interesting paradox created here, as Homebrew is written in Ruby...

jtvjan 7y ago
Not really. Homebrew would just need to start installing a copy of Ruby in its install script (which is written in bash).
saagarjha 7y ago
Presumably the shell script that you paste into your terminal to install Homebrew will install Ruby as well…

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