As part of the macOS Monterey 12.3 beta cycle, Apple included the following note in the publicly accessible release notes for the macOS Monterey 12.3 beta release:
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| Python | |
| Deprecations | |
| Python 2.7 was removed from macOS in this update. Developers should use Python 3 or an alternative language instead. (39795874) |
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-12_3-release-notes
This is a development which Apple has warned about for a while, beginning with macOS Catalina’s release notes:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-catalina-10_15-release-notes
Apple has not included a Python 3 runtime with macOS Monterey, so the removal of Python 2.7 from macOS 12.3 and later will mean that Apple is no longer shipping a Python runtime as part of macOS.
For those who want or need to use an Apple-supplied Python distribution, Python 3 is included as part of Xcode and the Xcode Command Line Tools. Those tools are not part of macOS and will need to be installed separately.
As an alternative, a number of shops have been deploying their own Python 3 distribution. For more information on this, please see Greg Neagle’s Snakes on a Plan session from MacSysAdmin 2020:
Session slides:
http://docs.macsysadmin.se/2020/pdf/SnakesOnAPlan.pdf
Session video:
http://docs.macsysadmin.se/2020/video/Day1Session1.mp4