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Comment by joelkesler | Hacker News Reader

I would recommend also installing an updated git through homebrew and using that instead.

I'm still trying to understand why Apple install XCode command line utilities into an area of the system that is protected by SIP.

There is nothing hugely special about their tools - every other app apparently has to install into a different location as best practice, so I don't understand why Apple don't follow their own guidelines!

> I'm still trying to understand why Apple install XCode command line utilities into an area of the system that is protected by SIP.

They don't. Plenty of comments explain where the Xcode git actually is.

And as has also been asked - why do they symlink to the /usr/bin directory in the first place then?

They have three perfectly reasonable directories they can install into, which is what they recommend that application developers do when installing their software:

/Applications /Library /usr/local

So why do they feel the need to link git into /usr/bin? They could link it into /usr/local/bin - the $PATH variable includes this directory already.

You state that plenty of comments explain where the Xcode git actually is, but that misses the point entirely. Why is it linked into /usr/bin?

There are no symlinks in /usr/bin, they are wrapper programs determining whether you already have the Command Line Tools or full Xcode installed. If not, they will open dialogs asking you to install these additional software packages.

And if you do have them installed? What does it do then - invoke git?

Yes. It uses the tools from the location currently selected as the active developer directory (via xcode-select).

I guess that's better. You still can't kill the execute bit on the binary. But the way that Apple are doing things seems a bit of a ridiculous.

The windows equivalent of homebrew (chocolatey) is great but has many out of date packages.

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