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No description of what architectures are supported by MacOS "universal2" installers #2232
Description
Describe the bug
There is no description of what "universal2" means. Some people might not be familiar with that term, especially now that MacOS has supported 3 different architectures in recent memory.
The fact that the term "universal" had to be versioned should be an indication of the ambiguity.
To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:
- Go to python.org, hover "download", click "MacOS" (https://www.python.org/downloads/macos/)
- Some releases have "universal2 installer" links, some have "Intel-only installer" links, some have "no files". No description of "universal2" on that page
- Click on a release, for example 3.11.1 (https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3111/)
- That page has a lot of information, including a definition of quark-gluon plasma, MD5 sums, file sizes accurate to the byte, GPG signatures, Sigstore files (with a link that defines Sigtore!), a note next to the "recommended" Windows installer, a note about which MacOS versions are supported ("for macOS 10.9 and later"), but again no mention of architectures apart from the term "universal2"
Expected behavior
Uncommon terms such as "universal2" which are directly relevant to Mac users would be defined somewhere on either the MacOS-specific download page or the download section of a release's page
Screenshots
Activity
maltfield commentedon Apr 8, 2024
I agree that the downloads page should be updated.
FWIW, this is documented here https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html#getting-and-installing-python
JacobCoffee commentedon Sep 16, 2024
@hugovk thoughts?
hugovk commentedon Sep 16, 2024
For the past 2+ years, and all 3.10+ releases, there has only only been a single macOS installer available.
So I think this issue is now less pressing than it used to be: you just get on with it and install with that one macOS installer.
ned-deily commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Yes, the place to document this is in the https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html which I plan to update soon. (It is also described in the macOS installer's ReadMe file that is displayed when using the macOS Installer.app.) That would be following the example of the Windows download page which does go into some detail on its Using Windows page.
remram44 commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Oh hi guys. Nice to see progress on this issue. As a non-primarily-MacOS developer, the "universal2" term is very puzzling to me.
Why is that "the place"? Is there really no room on download pages (e.g. https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3126/) for a little sentence or link explaining what it is?
Or just remove the term I suppose. It's not like the "Windows installer" mentions "intel self-extracting dynamically-linked PE executable".
Why have the term if it doesn't guide the user (there's only one link) and only has the potential to confuse them (there's no explanation)?
ned-deily commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Universal 2is an Apple generic term used in the macOS world, we didn't invent it. And it's not going to change from release to release.We could remove
universal2from the description on the download page but it does document a particular variant, i.e. natively supporting all current Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. However, it does now strike me that theVersionfield does not show the more important information about what macOS versions are supported. That info does show up in theDescriptionfield on a release page (i.e.for macOS 10.13 and later) but theDescriptionfield info is not included in the listings on the Downloads / MacOS page. Off the top of my head, there are two ways we could handle that. The first would be to modify the Downloads page to also display theDescriptionfield for each download file. That would require a redesign of that page and make it noisier than it is. The other, simpler approach would be to just change theVersionfield to include the version info, frommacOS 64-bit universal2 installerto perhapsmacOS 10.13+ universal2 installer. That is something the release managers can do without needing any changes to the website codebase itself. Thoughts?remram44 commentedon Sep 16, 2024
I mean how hard could it be to add a little link to whatever Apple documentation page is relevant? I note that you added links to both the "Sigstore" and "SBOM" terms, which are no more obscure.
remram44 commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Ditto for the other page, I am not sure I understand the complexity or the need for "a redesign of that page".
maltfield commentedon Sep 16, 2024
I agree that the downloads page should have a link somewhere on its page to
/using/mac.html#getting-and-installing-python...and if space is an issue, the link can be 1 character long (just an info character):
ⓘ
JacobCoffee commentedon Sep 16, 2024
@ned-deily great news - would you like me to open an issue in CPython docs for this?
JacobCoffee commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Ideally we could do a tooltip for these - probably in the header row... but I think the way we generate the pages is manual and so that would mean updating all of them going forward.
That would be a good way to close this one out and also add some more detail on SBOM/sigstore which is IMO confusing for non-security people
ned-deily commentedon Sep 16, 2024
To add the link to each description field as in your illustration is doable, of course, but would require some significant changes to the website code as the contents of those fields are built from an internal release database and the website just copies the text of that field without a provision for embedding links (AFAIK). If the
universal2description is confusing, I think I'd prefer removing it altogether. But we've been using that term since shortly after macOS 11 was released in the fall of 2020 and this hasn't seemed to have been an issue for most users.Sorry, I was referring there to my thought of adding the
Descriptionfield to each release file on that page to address the problem of which macOS releases were supported by each. That is an issue as our most recent releases (for 3.12.6 and the upcoming 3.13.0) now support macOS 10.13+; earlieruniversal2releases supported macOS 10.9+.Since the Python Release Team members will be meeting together next week, I suggest we postpone making a final decision on any changes here until after then. In the meantime, further comments are welcome!
ned-deily commentedon Sep 16, 2024
If we move this anywhere, I would suggest the
release-toolsrepo as that is where things that release managers do wrt the release database in the website are located. But let's hold off until after we've had a chance to discuss this next week.remram44 commentedon Sep 16, 2024
Looks to be generated by this code using this template. Adding a condition to show the universal2 description if any release is universal2 doesn't seem too difficult. But if you have a complex process that need to be followed through multiple repos before you can make any change... I can't help with that. Good luck with the paperwork though!
hugovk commentedon Sep 17, 2024
Tooltips generally aren't accessible to those not using a mouse: touchscreens (like mobile), screen readers and other assistive technology.
hugovk commentedon Nov 27, 2025
I suggest for future releases we remove "universal2" and just call it the "macOS 64-bit installer" (or even "macOS installer").
We only provide this single installer. The last time we provided an Intel-only alongside this one was in 2022.
Please see PR python/release-tools#309.