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We can't wait for Lion, nor expect everyone to use Lion.

But nothing has changed. The presence of Xcode 4 does not invalidate people's existing copies of Xcode 3 already installed or that exist on their OSX DVD. Further, the version of gcc is the same.

If this whole episode is what finally gives people the motivation to have an easier-to-install binary of gcc, then great. But the actual need is the same today as it was last week.

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This is a fair point.

It may work that we can support both 3 and 4. But experience suggests that even minor build bumps of Xcode cause issues compiling software.

Ultimately it is a lot easier for us if we can say install this and use that and you will have very few issues using Homebrew.

The need is the same... 'ish. Personally I think Lion will have xcode 4 free (bit like Facetime has been done). Here's the thing tho, compiler bugfixes etc. need you to sign up to the dev. program or, at the moment, buy xcode. This is bad imho and therefore it's worth the effort to give the user of homebrew an option.

> Here's the thing tho, compiler bugfixes etc. need you to sign up to the dev. program or, at the moment, buy xcode. This is bad imho and therefore it's worth the effort to give the user of homebrew an option.

Xcode 3.2.6 was released at the same time as Xcode 4 and is freely downloadable.

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