realpath not available on macOS 12 (breaks venv activate and uv tool run) #13807
Description
Summary
The realpath binary is not available on macOS 12 and earlier. This results in error messages when attempting to activate a (relocatable) virtual environment or when running a tool without installing (uvx or uv tool run) as both of these use realpath in the script.
The offending lines of code appear to be:
uv wheel:uv/crates/uv-install-wheel/src/wheel.rs
Line 127 in 98c7081
uv-virtualenv:uv/crates/uv-virtualenv/src/virtualenv.rs
Line 299 in 98c7081
Here is an example running on macOS 12.7.6, ARM with uv venv --relocatable
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % uv venv --relocatable
Using CPython 3.13.3
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Activate with: source .venv/bin/activate
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % source .venv/bin/activate
.venv/bin/activate:81: command not found: realpath
(anka) anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % which realpath
realpath not foundHere is a example running on an macOS 12.7.6, ARM with uvx
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % uvx kst --version
/Users/anka/.cache/uv/archive-v0/-v1Dn8vBMUCf8TwtMb7Lg/bin/kst: line 2: realpath: command not found
/Users/anka/.cache/uv/archive-v0/-v1Dn8vBMUCf8TwtMb7Lg/bin/kst: line 2: /Users/anka/python: No such file or directory
/Users/anka/.cache/uv/archive-v0/-v1Dn8vBMUCf8TwtMb7Lg/bin/kst: line 2: exec: /Users/anka/python: cannot execute: No such file or directoryIf the tool is first installed with uv tool install, then this does not happen. This make sense since the console script uses a different (simplified) shabang.
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % uv tool install kst
Resolved 21 packages in 11ms
Installed 21 packages in 22ms
+ annotated-types==0.7.0
+ certifi==2025.4.26
+ charset-normalizer==3.4.2
+ click==8.1.8
+ idna==3.10
+ kst==1.0.2
+ markdown-it-py==3.0.0
+ mdurl==0.1.2
+ platformdirs==4.3.8
+ pydantic==2.11.5
+ pydantic-core==2.33.2
+ pygments==2.19.1
+ requests==2.32.3
+ rich==14.0.0
+ ruamel-yaml==0.18.12
+ ruamel-yaml-clib==0.2.12
+ shellingham==1.5.4
+ typer==0.16.0
+ typing-extensions==4.14.0
+ typing-inspection==0.4.1
+ urllib3==2.4.0
Installed 1 executable: kst
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % kst --version
kst, version 1.0.2
anka@arm-12_7_5 ~ % uvx kst --version
kst, version 1.0.2I have tested this across both Intel and ARM versions of macOS and Python 3.11-13
Platform
macOS 12 arm64, macOS 12 amd64
Version
uv 0.7.9 (13a86a2 2025-05-30)
Python version
Python 3.13