TL;DR \u2013 Bash ain’t goin’ nowhere on Mac, both version-wise and in terms of its presence. Looking at the longevity of other shells on the system, it will likely be around for a good while longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There’s been a lot of hand wringing and angst online about bash and zsh becoming the new default shell. Some folks feel Apple is signaling deprecation and removal and have the crushing feeling they must convert all their bash script to zsh. I think that’s a bit unnecessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
True, the default shell is changing from bash to zsh, as Apple notes here<\/a>. This is indeed a Good Thing\u2122 as zsh shell has been one of the most frequently updated shells on macOS. Bash, on the other hand, has been stuck at varying versions of 3.2 for 12 years now! On the plus side, sysadmins have “enjoyed” predictable and stable behavior from bash during this time. Sure, you’d love new features but when you are scripting for the enterprise, across multiple OS versions, this is just the sort of thing you want: boringness and dependability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As far as deprecations go, the only<\/em> thing Apple has signaled<\/a> as being deprecated eventually<\/em> are scripting language runtimes (not shells):<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won\u2019t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it\u2019s recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202) Use of Python 2.7 isn\u2019t recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won\u2019t include Python 2.7. Instead, it\u2019s recommended that you run I’ve done some digging and culled the shell versions from OS X 10.0 to macOS 10.15, along with their respective release dates. I think it shows that shells, no matter how old and crusty, tend to be long lived and not soon removed on macOS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s a quick way to check your shell versions (except for dash<\/a>): <\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>python3<\/code> from within Terminal. (51097165)<\/p>mac OS Catalina 10.15 Release Notes<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n