Installing Software at the Command Line

Installing Xcode, Apple's Developer Tools

This install is necessary. You will need it to follow most of the rest of this book, and it will allow you to make use of a far wider world of Mac OS X/Unix software than will be available to you if you don't install Xcode. The Mac OS X Xcode developer tools include compilers, libraries, and assorted programs. You might be tempted to skip this install, thinking that if you aren't a developer, the benefits won't be worth the disk space. Install Xcode anyway, even if you're not planning on doing any development. Because of the previously mentioned "delivered as a recipe" nature of most Unix software, your system will need parts of the Xcode installation whether or not you plan to use it. The parts that we'll cover in this chapter are the compilation and debugging tools. If you're interested in details regarding the libraries and so forth, remember those man commands, and spend some time digging around in the system man pages to learn what other neat things exist after the installation.

Installation of Xcode is much like installing other software from the GUI. Insert the CD and click the installer package. Be aware that the developer tools can be installed only on your startup volume, and that the installer, like the installer for the operating system itself, has a rather poor notion of the amount of time the install will take.