About upgrading to MacOS 13

[Stephan Witt]

Am 07.12.2022 um 16:21 schrieb Daniel CLEMENT via lyx-users <lyx-users at lists.lyx.org>:
> 
> Dear list members,
> 
> I have monitored last month’s threads about LyX woes under macOS 13. There wasn’t a definite conclusion it seems.
> 
> Would you say it’s safe to upgrade to MacOS13 now (with LyX 2.3.6.2)?
> 
> When I installed it, it complained about Python missing, but I somehow managed to get Python installed too. 
> 
> I’m rather new to Mac, and in no hurry at all to do the upgrade. Perhaps it would be best to wait for LyX 2.4?
> 
> I’ll take your advice - best regards,

Hi Daniel,

I’m on Mojave for production as primary macOS (because I’m using Aperture from Apple - a 32bit application w/o 64bit upgrade option!).

I have access to a M1 system with Big Sur for development builds of LyX. I don’t want to upgrade because I’ll loose the option to test LyX on Big Sur.

I’ve tested LyX 2.3.6.2 on different VMs with macOS 12.x and didn’t have time and resources to try macOS 13 yet.

My experience is: starting with Monterey 12.3 Apple dropped the support for Python 2.x and the upgrade from earlier versions removes it. There is a replacement Python 3 installed as a stub and if this gets called it asks the user to download and install the real thing from Apple.

There is one report of having a problem after upgrade from Monterey to Ventura (macOS 13) with Python again. I couldn’t get the information how this happened. Probably the upgrade to Ventura breaks the installed Python 3 from Apple. One has to reinstall it manually.

All this is a consequence of Apples decision to pass the responsibility for a working Python software to app developers and/or end users. So they cannot be blamed for security problems with it, IMO. It makes no sense to include a Python package with LyX and therefore it is ok to install either Apples or the „official“ open-source Python for Apple on the system. It’s an open task to detect the current situation on the users system and give more prominent and useful advice how to proceed.

There is another issue I’m aware of. On some systems the gatekeeper keeps nagging and says the LyX binary is a suspicious one. Probably it’s because of the bundle permissions, the certificate used for signing or the security settings of users system.

My advice would be to try the upgrade if you’re able to go back with time machine w/o hassle. I’ll be there to answer questions and help to solve problems. If you don’t want to risk anything I can understand it and you may wait for the results of my experiments in a virtual machine. Another option is to create a virtual machine yourself and try it there and contact me if something is broken.

Hope that helps and regards,
Stephan