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I use macports but I am not happy about having to install full blown XCode in order to install macports in order to install (insert trivial, minor package here).

Has this changed ?

I am basing this on my experience of both Snow Leopard and Mavericks ... and in those cases, I had to download and install XCode. Further, this is (I suppose) more a criticism of OSX and how it does not include basic tools ...

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xcode-select --install on the CLI has been available since Mavericks (I think) and will install the CLI build tools without need to install the multi-gigabyte Xcode. I don't personally use macports, but that command should pretty much solve your issue.

I don't consider installing Xcode to be an unreasonable thing to do to - consider that 70+% of the people who buy a mac have no need for the compilers or system libraries. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to me - I mean, my debian box doesn't come with any of the devtools installed - and its a couple gigs of software to install.

10,5GB for latest Xcode which is kinda far from a trivial download size or space requirement.

xcode-select --install is more like 130mb, not 10gb.

http://osxdaily.com/2014/02/12/install-command-line-tools-ma...

> I don't consider installing Xcode to be an unreasonable thing to do to

Neither do I, but you can get away with just the command line tools. It's even on the install instructions.

I would put that number closer to 99.9%, if not 99.99%. :)

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