Python 2.7 deprecated in MacOS Catalina

prl · Post by **prl** » Sun Feb 23, 2020 16:41

When I run Python 2.7 (the current default Python version in MacOS Catalina 10.15.3), I get:

prl@Xerxes ~ % python

WARNING: Python 2.7 is not recommended. 
This version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. 
Future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7. 
Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using 'python3' from within Terminal.

Python 2.7.16 (default, Dec 13 2019, 18:00:32) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.32.4) (-macos10.15-objc-s on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> ^D
prl@Xerxes ~ %

The Catalina developers' notes (section "Scripting Language Runtimes") also says that scripting languages (Perl, Python & Ruby are specifically mentioned) will no longer be included by default, and may require additional packages (I hope that doesn't mean "they'll only be in XCode", though I install XCode anyway for other reasons).

peteru · Post by **peteru** » Sun Feb 23, 2020 17:07

Does OSX ship with some kind of virtualisation solution to allow you to run a proper Linux development environment? Windows 10 has caught up with Linux and these days ships with support for running Linux, containers and other virtualised workloads. Has Apple caught up there? If not, are there third party solutions that do not require payment?

prl · Post by **prl** » Sun Feb 23, 2020 17:52

No vendor-supplied virtualisation that I know of. I have Linux & Win8 running inside VirtualBox, though I haven't actually tried them out under Catalina yet.