macOS 12.3 and /usr/bin/python. Status?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 17, 2022, at 08:49, Gerben Wierda wrote:

> The question I have when moving from 12.2 to 12.3 is: is there a port in my set that depends on /usr/bin/python (and should become dependent on a MacPorts python instead)?

There are innumerable ways that python might be referenced in a software package, so I can't answer that. If you wanted to test it, you would make sure that no python is selected (sudo port select python none) and then rebuild the ports from source (e.g. sudo port -ns upgrade --force logrotate). If they fail to build saying python was needed and not found, you've found a problem we could fix. If they install, that still doesn't guarantee that they're not affected. They may have detected at build time that python didn't exist and disabled whatever python-using functionality they contained. (You could check the log to see if they mention anything about not finding python, though absence of such a message isn't a guarantee of success either.) Or they may have blindly installed files that reference python, assuming that it would exist, and if you try to use these files at runtime they will fail. You could try grepping the contents of the installed files of each of the ports for "/usr/bin/python" or "/usr/bin/env python" or just "python" (though that last one is likely to give you lots of irrelevant hits)..


> Doing the (normally unnecessary) migrations run at least will catch the dependencies during build.

Only for ports you actually build, not for ports for which you receive a binary archive.


> Numbers do not give a definitive answer to major or minor updates. E.g. tomcat 8.2 or 8.3 are minor updates, but tomcat 8.5 was/is in fact a major update at the company I work, because it was fundamentally changes. The numbers are just a clue, not reality. See also Lifecycle Management – Let the Sunshine in

In the case of macOS version numbers as they relate to a need to follow the migration instructions, they do. The migration instructions are for helping you upgrade from one major macOS version to another. They are not needed for minor OS version updates.