Any reason not to update to Xcode 12.2 on Catalina?

[Ryan Schmidt]

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On Nov 15, 2020, at 11:18, Kevin Horton wrote:

> Caution - It looks like some recent macOS update fiddled with the preferences in Software Update.  I found this morning that XCode on one Mac had been unexpectedly updated to v12.2, and I found the box ticked for "Install app updates from the App Store" in System Preferences -> Software Update -> Advanced.  I managed to catch this before the second Mac had updated XCode

Apple loves to push automatic updates on users, which is often great, but in the case of Xcode and its command line tools it's not always desirable.


> Now one of my Macs is running Catalina, with XCode 12.2, but without having upgraded the Command Line Tools.  And I ran "sudo port selfupdate; sudo port upgrade outdated" before I discovered that XCode had been updated.
> 
> What is my best path forward?  Should I downgrade XCode?  Update the machine to Big Sur?  Just leave it as is and let the MacPorts team work on ports for a few weeks, then upgrade to Big Sur?

You should definitely never run with a mismatched set of Xcode and its command line tools. Either update the command line tools to the Xcode 12.2 version or downgrade Xcode to whatever it was before. Using Xcode 11.x and matching CLT on macOS 10.15 will keep you from encountering some build failures.

You don't have the option of using Xcode 11.x on Big Sur, so you can't avoid those build failures there; you have to wait for us to fix them. So if you want to avoid problems, don't upgrade to Big Sur yet.