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Comment by wolframhempel | Hacker News Reader

Very cool project, but it's worth mentioning that you can simply run 'python –m SimpleHTTPServer' in any directory on mac to spin up a HTTP server with that directory as root

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As the second link in the article[0] points out, this app exists precisely because they're removing that, i.e. Macs don't ship with python installed anymore.

[edit] More specifically, they've already stopped shipping with Python 2, and stated their intention to stop including any scripting language runtimes at all, including Python, Ruby, and Perl.[1]

[0]: https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/1511388397855645703

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

One more sad nail in the coffin of general-purpose computing devices.

No, you were always much better off installing Python yourself than using the system's Python, which mostly served to get in the way.

Yes, once you were up and running and knew what you were doing and what you needed, but the default install meant there was very little friction to first time programmers dipping their toes in the water.

There was a ton of friction trying to use pip. Same with ruby gems. So a lot of tutorials for web development put you in a pickle quickly.

Depends on the tutorial I guess. I learned python back in 08/09 so maybe the landscape has changed but I had already written full pieces of software before I ever worried about installing 3rd party libs via pip etc

I see where the GP is coming from. The old system installations of Perl, Python, and Ruby could be thought of as the 2000s equivalent of the ROM BASIC on early microcomputers -- an easy way for anyone with access to such a computer, even a child, to start dabbling with programming. But I suppose today's equivalent is the browser dev tools, or maybe Swift Playgrounds on current Apple computers.

The difference is that the barrier to entry is so much lower now. If I were trying to help someone just starting out, I would point them at something like repl.it instead of whatever is preinstalled on their machine.

The system Python and Ruby installs on macOS at this point are more of a hindrance to newbies than a help. You have to explain the differences between versions and hope they don't have to deal with any conflicts.

  > The system Python and Ruby installs on macOS at this point are more of a hindrance to newbies than a help

true, though it wouldn't be so bad if macos had a built-in package manager instead of needing to reach for homebrew (as great as it is)

That’s a Python issue with how janky their language versioning and package infrastructure is, not an issue with shipping a language.

In an alternate universe they could have done something about it, the same way a debian ships with a version, and if you don’t want it you change it.

Apple is no small startup that can’t maintain an update system (could have been just part of the xcode tools), so I kinda resent them for dropping the ball completely.

Well, I'm irritated at them for exposing a system Python at all, because I need Python to actually work, the way I need it to, so my point here is: Apple can't win.

It's a single line copy, paste & enter from brew.sh.

This might be the closest to the "just install jquery" advice I can think of

Nah, it's just raising the barrier of entry slightly for newcomers.

For the real coffin nails, I look to the gradually-increasing difficulty of installing software that isn't signed by a developer registered with Apple. Fellow frogs, is it not warm in here?

Or if you're using Python 3.x, `python -m http.server`

Not on iOS. This is the simplest way I've seen yet to run an HTTP server on my iPhone

Now that Python 2 is well past it's support date, use

    python3 -m http.server [optional port]

instead

It's simple for us but I think the ethos around this project is not even having to open a command line. Like old Mac OS X days, just click a button to start a web server

Yes, there are loads of people out there who would love to learn HTML, CSS, maybe some basic image editing, and never have to open a command line. It isn't intuitive to people who live in the command line (why wouldn't you want such an efficient tool?), but it's like convincing someone to like a healthy food they find repulsive.

Is mac OSX still shipping python 2 then? Yikes.

(it's python -m http.server on python 3)

No, a recent version of Monterey finally stripped it (thankfully).

Better yet, do it in Applescript!

do shell script "python –m SimpleHTTPServer"

(No idea if this will work, there's probably some stupid restriction somewhere).

Honest question, since my days with OSX are far behind: why would I want to do this in Applescript if the only thing this does is start the python http server? In other words, what advantage does it offer over just directly running the command?

If I remember correctly (been a while since I played with Applescript) I think you could save a script and set up the UI so that you can launch it in the macOS UI (instead of firing up a Terminal.app and entering the command by hand)

Is macOS unable to launch shell scripts using the UI?

Might be something a more current macOS user would have to answer. I just remember doing this using a little applescript menu icon on the topbar.

edit: now that I think about it, I did use "bitbar" for a while which is actually a little bit more powerful still. I can't find it any more but this looks similar - https://github.com/matryer/xbar#get-started

No; if you give a shell script the .command extension (and make it executable), then you can double-click it in the Finder to open and run it in the Terminal application.

You can use the Script Editor to save your Applescript or JavaScript script as a .app which can be distributed as you'd like.

https://support.apple.com/guide/script-editor/welcome/mac

There is also the ruby version: `ruby -run -ehttpd . -p8000`

With Ruby, `ruby -run -e httpd . -p 8000`

True, but python comes preinstalled on macs

Isn't Ruby also included by default?

No the opposite is true - Python does not come preinstalled, but Ruby does.

    chrisseaton@Chriss-MacBook-Pro ~ % python --version
    zsh: command not found: python
    chrisseaton@Chriss-MacBook-Pro ~ % ruby --version
    ruby 2.6.8p205 (2021-07-07 revision 67951) [universal.arm64e-darwin21]

The name has changed:

  ᐅ /usr/bin/python3 --version
  Python 3.8.9

As mentioned in another thread: not anymore.

For those of us odd ones…

php -S localhost:8000 -t webdir/

https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver...

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