GSoC 2015 Idea Discussion

[Clemens Lang]

> Are there stats what percentage of the current ports build without Xcode
> installed? I have a hunch you'll find that a good part do depend on the SDK if
> not only because Qt (and presumable GTk{2,3}) use CoreFoundation and Carbon ...

No, there are no stats, simply because we don't know. Personal experience says
almost all of my ports built without Xcode when upgrading to Yosemite, where I
did not install Xcode on purpose to test exactly that.

Considering homebrew does not require Xcode, that's exactly what I would have
expected as well.


> So maybe it could (should) be part of the project to figure out during port
> development whether a port requires Xcode? (because I presume most port
> developers will have it installed and thus cannot easily do the obvious test).

That's exactly where trace mode comes into play. It should be used during
development to see if the port builds without Xcode present (by actually hiding
the files shipped with Xcode).

-- 
Clemens Lang