Does MacPorts need ALL of Xcode?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 27, 2021, at 11:49, Filipp Gunbin wrote:

> On 26/09/2021 23:42 +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
> 
>> The majority of ports will indeed build fine with just the CLT
>> installed. There are a number though where the build does indeed
>> require a complete Xcode installation, which is why the baseline
>> recommendation is to install Xcode. However if you are ok with perhaps
>> running into the occasional port failure (the likelihood for which
>> depends on which ports you use) you likely can get by just fine with
>> just the CLT.
> 
> How can one check if a given port requires full XCode?

You can check if its portfile contains the line:

use_xcode yes

If it does, it requires Xcode to build.

However, if it is distributable, then it may already have been built by our build servers, which have both Xcode and the command line tools installed, in which case MacPorts can obtain and install that pre-built archive for you without you needing to have Xcode installed on your computer. In fact, if a port is distributable, you don't even need the command line tools installed to install it.