macports and Xcode

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 10, 2008, at 14:31, Darren Weber wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 8, 2008 at 2:32 PM, Bryan Blackburn wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Oct 08, 2008 at 02:16:08PM -0700, rhubbell said:
>>
>>> Probably a ridiculous question. (never stopped me before)
>>> Is macports always and forever dependent upon Xcode?
>>> Can it be de-coupled?
>>
>> As long as MacPorts builds ports from source, then Xcode is an  
>> absolute
>> requirement (for gcc etc).  If the day comes that MacPorts  
>> distributes
>> binary packages, then Xcode may only be needed by some ports and not
>> MacPorts as a whole.
>
> As a guess, the macports installation process could include
>
> a) tcl
> b) a build system port (bootstrapped) to replace Xcode distributions

I suppose. But what would be the advantage? What's so awful about  
having to install Xcode?