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OS X Isn't for Developers

zachholman.com

11–20 of 252 posts

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#13

The few of points I've made about this are: 1. The Xcode 4 download compared to Xcode 3 is basically just a different IDE. The gcc version is, for all intents and purposes, identical. There's nothing stopping anybody from just installing that if all they need is the toolchain. 2. The other big 2 OS's (Windows and Ubuntu) don't have any build tools installed by default either. Granted they are just an apt-get away on…

If I wasn't a dev, I'd be pissed to find out some compiler toolchain IDE gongshow eating up 5-15GB of my disk space Yeah, but the essentials that most command line builds require wouldn't even take up 10% of that. Apple already wastes gigabytes on printer drivers and extra languages you don't need.

No doubt, hence why just the toolchain would be awesome. I don't even use Xcode.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#14
post #7

I don't understand? Can't you release the ruby gems or whatever it is as binaries? You only need to spend the $5 if you want to change something, right?

The end-user needs to have build tools installed on their system if your library uses C. Same for if you want to install some standard system packages like ImageMagick.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#16
post #9

The few of points I've made about this are: 1. The Xcode 4 download compared to Xcode 3 is basically just a different IDE. The gcc version is, for all intents and purposes, identical. There's nothing stopping anybody from just installing that if all they need is the toolchain. 2. The other big 2 OS's (Windows and Ubuntu) don't have any build tools installed by default either. Granted they are just an apt-get away on…

I'm so down with an apt-get (or in this case, brew install) for build tools. That's really what I'm getting at. It'd be great if it were installed by default, but if it were just accessibile by any means it'd be a massive step up. Most people don't need all of Xcode.

I don't even use Xcode at all. I'd much prefer a `brew install` or even if they had their own *.pkg file or something that was just the toolchain.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#17
post #7

I don't understand? Can't you release the ruby gems or whatever it is as binaries? You only need to spend the $5 if you want to change something, right?

Yeah, why not just ship binaries? Needing to install a compiler separately seems like far too high a barrier already.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#19
post #10
post #7

I don't understand? Can't you release the ruby gems or whatever it is as binaries? You only need to spend the $5 if you want to change something, right?

Gems that use C extensions generally build them using native libraries.

That sounds fixable.

Re: OS X Isn't for Developers

#20
post #14
post #7

I don't understand? Can't you release the ruby gems or whatever it is as binaries? You only need to spend the $5 if you want to change something, right?

The end-user needs to have build tools installed on their system if your library uses C. Same for if you want to install some standard system packages like ImageMagick.

... or, you could just ship a binary instead.
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