Xcode Command Line Tools included with Xcode 5.0.x on Mavericks

Something I’ve always tried to include with Xcode installations are the Xcode command line tools. Starting in Xcode 4.3, Apple stopped bundling these tools by default and instead made them an optional install.

Since having these tools is useful, I re-packaged various versions of Xcode so that I could include these tools as part of the install. One of the ways I could tell that they were installed was by going into Xcode’s Downloads preferences panel and see if the Command Line Tools showed up with a checkbox entry.

Starting in Mavericks though, the Command Line Tools entry disappeared from Downloads.

Meanwhile, the Xcode command line tools themselves moved. In Mountain Lion, the Xcode 5.0.x command line tools are installed into /usr/bin and other system software directories.

In Mavericks, they are installed into /Library/Developer.

Why was this happening? After some digging and some collaborative work in the ##osx-server IRC room, an answer was found. See below the jump for details.

What was happening is that Apple had gone back to bundling the Xcode command line tools for Mavericks into Xcode 5.0.x.

However, they’ve continued to make the Xcode command line tools available as a separate install for those folks who don’t want to install Xcode.

Apple has also set up the Xcode command line tools so that they could be installed on demand via Software Update.

In many ways, this gives Mac admins the best of all possible worlds. If you need Xcode and the command line tools, all you need to install is Xcode.

Need the command line tools, but don’t want Xcode? No problem, just install the the Xcode command line tools by themselves.

Don’t want to install either Xcode or the Xcode command line tools on all of your machines, but you still need an easy way to install it on the machines that need it? Apple’s got you covered with the on-demand install via Software Update.

  

You can install both Xcode 5.0.x and the separate Xcode command line tools in Mavericks without a problem, but Mavericks will prefer to use the tools that are bundled in /Applications/Xcode.app and will ignore the tools installed into /Library/Developer unless Xcode.app is removed from the Mac.