Using Python 3 for code bash script

[fishcharlie]

General

This PR changes the code bash script to use python3 instead of python.

Few questions that I don't know the answers to:

• How will this impact existing users? Will they need to rerun the install bash script? Should this be a process that happens automatically on app launch or something?
• Python 3 no longer comes bundled with macOS 12.3, instead it's bundled with the Xcode Developer Tools. Apple recommends bundling Python 3 directly within your application if it is required. Is this something we should consider? Or is it a safe assumption that all VS Code users will have Xcode Developer Tools installed?

This PR fixes #141738

[timsutton]

Python 3 no longer comes bundled with macOS 12.3

It never did: Python3 was always only installed via either Command-Line Developer Tools or Xcode. What is going away in 12.3 is the Python 2 framework and its executables one could always find in /usr/bin.

Apple recommends bundling Python 3 directly within your application if it is required.

That seems like a complicated dependency to pull in if it isn't otherwise needed, especially for a multi-platform project.

Or is it a safe assumption that all VS Code users will have Xcode Developer Tools installed?

Homebrew does currently install Command-Line Tools automatically during its installation, however I'm not sure it's a reasonable assumption that all VSCode users on macOS have or use Homebrew.

Zsh does have a shorthand for realpath, however /bin/zsh is present on macOS only starting with Catalina (10.15). A couple options I might propose:

1. Replace the python usage with something written only with existing bash 3.2 builtins.
2. Shell out to /usr/bin/perl to use some form of realpath, since Perl is still a thing bundled in macOS. Apple still depends on Perl in some core OS tools, and shared tooling baked into many of their installer packages. So, it seems less likely to be going away in the immediate future.

[haykam821]

GitHub Desktop has this same problem as well for its github CLI. An unmerged pull request, desktop/desktop#13764, uses Perl to fix the problem.

It seems like GitHub Desktop introduced its CLI in desktop/desktop@65af5e0 based off of VS Code's be4a1ef, so if the Perl approach is used, this would possibly a case of GitHub Desktop contributing a fix upstream (in a sense!).

[fishcharlie]

Shell out to /usr/bin/perl to use some form of realpath, since Perl is still a thing bundled in macOS. Apple still depends on Perl in some core OS tools, and shared tooling baked into many of their installer packages. So, it seems less likely to be going away in the immediate future.

@timsutton @haykam821

I will note in Apple's 10.15 release notes it states:

Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it’s recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202)

So even if Apple depends on Perl currently, it's very likely to face the same fate as Python at some point.

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I will note that in my issue I created @bpasero linked to #138582.

Should we close this as a duplicate of #138582?

[deepak1556]

Merging to #141749, thanks for the PR!

[fishcharlie]

Merging to #141749, thanks for the PR!

@deepak1556 Think you meant #138582?