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Comment by darkhelmetlive | Hacker News Reader

The few of points I've made about this are:

1. The Xcode 4 download compared to Xcode 3 is basically just a different IDE. The gcc version is, for all intents and purposes, identical. There's nothing stopping anybody from just installing that if all they need is the toolchain.

2. The other big 2 OS's (Windows and Ubuntu) don't have any build tools installed by default either. Granted they are just an apt-get away on Ubuntu, but it's still something you have to explicitly install.

3. If I wasn't a dev, I'd be pissed to find some compiler toolchain IDE gongshow eating up 5-15GB of my disk space, so not having it by default is probably a good thing. Most people aren't devs.

I paid the $5, but I'd still like to see just the toolchain available as a free download, though I still don't think it would be a good thing to have it installed by default.

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The gcc version is, for all intensive purposes, identical.

"for all intents and purposes"

Also heard in the corporate world: "The ownness (sic) is on you" (onus).

I'm so down with an apt-get (or in this case, brew install) for build tools. That's really what I'm getting at. It'd be great if it were installed by default, but if it were just accessibile by any means it'd be a massive step up. Most people don't need all of Xcode.

I don't even use Xcode at all. I'd much prefer a `brew install` or even if they had their own *.pkg file or something that was just the toolchain.

So perhaps the answer is to allow Homebrew to bootstrap itself with a basic toolchain if one isn't available. It could even deprecate its toolchain if you later installed Xcode.

There's no technical reason why this isn't possible -- the Apple gcc toolchain is, by necessity, available as Open Source.

I use Xcode rather a lot, so this isn't a big deal for me, but it seems like a sane answer for "the rest". Sure, you'd still need Homebrew, but that plus a toolchain is a much smaller burden.

This sounds absolutely ideal. Homebrew bootstrapping itself using packaged builds of the xcode toolchain which, as someone else mentioned, apple has to provide as it's open source. Homebrew itself is pure ruby, which is already part of the OS.

It could be done as part of the homebrew install process. This would be a step forward for everyone. Most OS X devs use homebrew anyway, and for those that don't use xcode this would simplify things a lot.

I hate downloading that massive DMG. I can't even use wget easily because I have to be authenticated. Who cares about what apple decides to do or not do with the tools the community developed for itself? That's what the licenses are for, people. So we can look after ourselves.

If there was a package manager for os x that shipped binaries we wouldn't be in this predicament either. brew building from source is just as much to blame as os x not shipping gcc with default install.

If I wasn't a dev, I'd be pissed to find out some compiler toolchain IDE gongshow eating up 5-15GB of my disk space

Yeah, but the essentials that most command line builds require wouldn't even take up 10% of that. Apple already wastes gigabytes on printer drivers and extra languages you don't need.

Your house is not for developers! It did not come with a free computer when you bought it! Even though a computer would only cost as little as 0.2% of the cost of the house, and the previous owner already wasted tons of money on the useless peach trees in the yard.

hm, how come gcc comes for free on lunux, and install is as easy as: >> sudo apt-get install gcc

You try that command in a base Arch install and get back to me. You're basically blaming Apple for not having a package manager, even though that's clearly the responsibility of the community.

Sure, but if you are a dev, installing the necessary tools is a pretty easy and painless thing to do. If you aren't a dev (like most people), why have it installed at all?

Since Snow Leopard, printer drivers are no longer included with the OS either. Instead, they are downloaded through Software Update as soon as you plug a printer in.

Having said that, the fact that Xcode is listed on the Mac App Store instead of just in the developer portal, I suspect that Apple will bundle Xcode 4 with Lion to try to encourage more app development.

Actually I think Snow Leopard stripped out a lot of those extra gigabytes; only a few printers have drivers out of the box now.

No doubt, hence why just the toolchain would be awesome. I don't even use Xcode.

> Apple already wastes gigabytes on printer drivers and extra languages you don't need.

No, they didn't. For example, Snow Leopard downloads printer drivers from Apple as you need them.

Extra languages are still there though. But I think this is good, mom uses her Mac Mini in Hebrew, my account uses English, dad uses our native Portuguese (I live in Brazil).

You likely don't need printer drivers or a developer tool chain to get your computer set up enough to connect it to WiFi or ethernet. You probably do need different languages if the one the computer defaults to is not one with which you are familiar.

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