best Xcode version for Mojave?

[Ken Cunningham]

On 2023-06-12, at 7:25 PM, Richard L. Hamilton wrote:

> "On macOS 10.14, iTerm2 @3.4.19 requires Xcode 11.0 or later but you have Xcode 10.3."
> 
> 11.3.1 is the newest Xcode for Mojave.
> 
> Is there any known downside to Xcode 11.3.1 on Mojave rather than the 10.3 I have on there now? Space is tight, so I'm not sure I want both.
> 
> And will I need 11.3.1 command line tools too?
> 


MacPorts builds software most reliably when the MacOSX SDK exactly matches the OS version you are building on.

This is because the vast amount of open source software out there does not usually take sufficient efforts to account for the different system capabilities of MacOS versions in the same way that software written specifically for MacOS might.

MacPorts will therefore usually recommend the last version of Xcode that comes with a MacOSX SDK that matches the system version. This is what the buildbots have installed.

You can, however, save the system-matching SDK from that version of Xcode somewhere, update Xcode to the latest version (that usually has the next system's MacOS SDK in it), and then copy back the system-matching SDK into the proper place in both the CommandLineTools installation and the Xcode installation.

Then you have the best of both worlds.

Because this involves extra steps, and is still hard to automate at present, MacPorts is not currently recommending that.

But that is what I do.

There are plans underway to allow a system-matching SDK (or any SDK) with any version of Xcode, but these have not yet reached the point where this is all automated.

Ken