Isn't the llvm toolchain a free download, and doesn't it offer a gcc front end?
OS X Isn't for Developers
21–30 of 252 posts
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#22What a lot of people seem to miss is that Xcode 4 is still a free download on http://developer.apple.com/xcode/ for members of the developer program (which is a free membership).
Free ADC members still have to go through App Store and pay the $4.99.
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#23The 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…
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Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#24The 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…
The gcc version is, for all intensive purposes, identical.
"for all intents and purposes"
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#25I don't get it. What's wrong with "sudo port install gcc46 ruby19 ruby186"?
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So perhaps the answer is to allow Homebrew to bootstrap itself with a basic toolchain if one isn't available. It could even deprecate its toolchain if you later installed Xcode.
There's no technical reason why this isn't possible -- the Apple gcc toolchain is, by necessity, available as Open Source.
I use Xcode rather a lot, so this isn't a big deal for me, but it seems like a sane answer for "the rest". Sure, you'd still need Homebrew, but that plus a toolchain is a much smaller burden.
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#27Argument kinda falls flat. For starters, Xcode 3 is still free, at least for now. No need for Xcode 4. Also, I'm certain that someone will package gcc for mac sooner or later now that there's an incentive to do so. There has not been much incentive to do so before now since it was included with Xcode.
Do you think Xcode 4 will become free at some point? What happens when Xcode 3 is no longer supported or sufficient?
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#28> You still won’t see PHP installed on Windows any time soon.
Not preinstalled because that would be undesirable, but http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx makes it pretty painless to install PHP and a whole whack of that style of crap.
Is there a real problem here? It seems like any compiler would do for the problems you're talking about. Yes, someone needs to package it, but I don't see that it really must be Apple.
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#29In the past these kinds of midstream Xcode upgrades were only available to registered developers. So other developers should be grateful that this upgrade is available at all this time. And if 5 bucks is too much for you then I guess you'll just have to continue to use Xcode 3 and wait for Lion.
Re: OS X Isn't for Developers
#30Compared to what other platform? Windows? Developer support out-of-the-box on Windows?
Linux, sure, but Linux is since its inception a developer's OS. Mac OS lies somewhere in between. There are many happy developers running OS X, and paying $5 for XCode doesn't make me mad enough to rant. Dude, it's $5. You paid nearly that for Angry Birds.