On Oct 3, 2021, at 00:08, Ian Wadham wrote: > OK, thanks Ryan, but how about https://guide.macports.org/#installing.xcode ? > > It explicitly says to install Xcode first, as a dependency of MacPorts, and > then do xcode-select —install, which is what I have been doing for 10 years > or more as a MacPorts user. And I suppose almost all other MacPorts users > have too. > > But in that time Xcode has grown from a gigabyte or two to 20 Gb on my > current MacOS, Catalina 10.15.7. That is a significant slice of the SSD > storage in a shop-standard MacBook Pro. So if a user does not need Xcode as a > prerequisite of MacPorts, he/she should not have to carry the time and space > overheads of downloading, installing and storing it. > > My question then is please can https://guide.macports.org/#installing.xcode > be re-written to help users who do not need Xcode for any other reason?
Yes, it can. Anyone can contribute updates to the documentation by submitting a pull request. Much of the Guide has not been updated in over a decade and is in dire need of rewrites or replacement. >>> Couldn’t those ports list Xcode as a build dependency? >> >> They do, by using this keyword: >> >> use_xcode yes > > Chris Jones raised the point on 26/27 September on this thread that some > ports require Xcode and gave this as the reason for MacPorts requiring Xcode. > > But how many ports are involved here? What percentage of users are likely to > need them? And what is the worst that can happen to a user if he/she happens > to run into one and does not have Xcode installed? MacPorts will print a message saying Xcode is required to install that port. > I tried port search use_xcode to try and shed some light on these questions, > but it gave "no match … found”. "port search" does not do a search of the entire literal contents of portfiles, but you can use grep to do that. Ports that include the xcode portgroup also most probably require Xcode. I would have thought that the xcode 1.0 portgroup would declare "use_xcode yes" somewhere in it, but it doesn't seem to. Maybe that is an oversight. According to this: port file all | sort -u | xargs grep -El '^[[:space:]]*(use_xcode[[:space:]]yes|PortGroup[[:space:]]+xcode[[:space:]])' | wc -l there are around 180 ports that require Xcode. There may be others that require Xcode but that do not so indicate yet.
