macports and Xcode

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>>> 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?

As long as the "Xcode" requirement is replace by something
fully equivalent, there shouldn't be much of a difference.
But like you say, there's not much incentive do so on the
Mac OS X platform but only on other platforms without it...

It goes something like this, first two being semi-optional:
1) Install X11 + SDK (if you want to run x11 applications)
2) Install Developer Tools (if you want to *build* ports)
3) Install MacPorts (requires Tcl/Foundation/mtree etc.)


One reason could be to keep MacPorts fully "self-contained",
and to cut down on the amount of "outside" dependencies... ?
Currently there is a big grey zone of what's ok to use from
system (GCC, X11, etc) and what is not (Perl, Python, etc)

Which sometimes gives problems - like with the broken cURL
on Tiger or the broken Tcl on Leopard, both from the system.
Had these been self-contained, it would have been easier to
fix them than having to wait (forever ?) for a vendor upgrade.


But when it all works and when MacPorts doesn't have binaries,
it's easier to just install X11 and Xcode from .pkg packages.
So that's what the Guide says. Besides, they're both included
on the DVDs (even if you might have to update Xcode DVD first)

--anders