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by Wowfunhappy 1833 days ago
Yes, that's the practical reason. But what's missing is a conceptual reason, something that makes it easy to remember what is and is not a developer tool.

Possible approaches that would be less confusing than what we have today:

1. Ship Python 3 with macOS.

2. Ship all of the command-line developer tools with macOS, including clang et al.

3. Bring back the Snow-Leopard-era /Developer folder, and put developer tools there.

4. Put developer tools in /usr/developer, or /usr/local/developer, or /usr/local/Apple, to balance both UNIXness and clarity.

5. Don't ship Python at all. The Python foundation already distributes a .pkg installer for Mac. If xCode needs Python, follow your own Human Interface Guidelines and put it in the Application bundle.

All of these approaches have downsides, but I still think they'd be clear improvements over the current situation. Which is to say, I want Apple to figure this out!