[tlbuild] Broken shebangs in TeX Live scripts

[Bruno Voisin]

Hi Ettore,

> On 13 Apr 2022, at 20:08, Ettore Aldrovandi <ealdrov at math.fsu.edu> wrote:
> 
> It seems like Python was moved to a package installed with the rest by the command line tool installer. On 12.3.1 I have python3 under
> 
> /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin

I thought exactly the same. Indeed, when you type python3 in Terminal, a dialog pops up offering to install the Command Line Tools so as to provide it.

But Adam Maxwell, the developer of TeX Live Utility, pointed out on the tlu list that this is a minimal version of Python, providing only what's necessary to compile macOS software but not enough to run Python per se. Here's what Adam wrote at <https://tug.org/pipermail/tlu/2022-January/000560.html>:

"Just to be clear, Apple is removing Python and not providing a replacement Python 3, except for a lobotomized version that comes with the developer tools."

I cannot say more, as I'm not a Python user myself, so I don't know exactly what's missing.

>> Next in line are Perl and Tcl. Right now you get:
> 
> Can one conjecture perl, ruby will head the same way? Incidentally, does MacOS still go through a standard UNIX certification?
> 
>> Finally, coming back to the original question, there are package managers on macOS. The two most popular ones are MacPorts <https://www.macports.org>, written in Tcl and installing to /opt/local, and Homebrew <https://brew.sh>, written in Ruby and installing to /usr/local on Intel Macs and /opt/homebrew on ARM Macs. There used to be Fink <https://www.finkproject.org>, which installed to /sw, but not much seems to be happening there these days.
> 
> There is also NIX <https://nixos.org>. I use home-brew, but then again, I don’t use MacTeX and do a unix installation.

Thanks for pointing this out; I wasn't aware of NixOS at all. I had a quick look at what they do <https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/installation/installing-binary.html#multi-user-installation>. It's more sophisticated but also wider-ranging than what other package managers do: modify /etc/bashrc and /etc/zshrc (not just adding elements to /etc/paths.d as we do for MacTeX), create group and user, create and encrypt a volume. They seem to know what they are doing in any case.

> However, is it conceivable that TeX users will want to install package managers previous to actually install a TeX 
> framework?

For MacTeX we aim at providing something that works on retail macOS, with no additions.

Bruno