4 ms·

What’s more scandalous are the 10+ gig Xcode updates. What justifies this absurd payload size for every minor version upgrade?

nonethewiser 3y ago
That is crazy. Im also bitter that you basically need xcode for git on macOS
- dubcanada 3y ago
  You need the developer tools (like 2.5gb), or homebrew.
  - murphyslaw 3y ago
    A lot of homebrew installs (those from code) require Apple's compile time stuff which only xcode has.
    - sigzero 3y ago
      You can only install the command line tools now. You don't need a full blown Xcode install.
    - daneel_w 3y ago
      No, you can build pretty much everything from homebrew using just the command line developer tools. It's been like that for 7-8 years, if not more. Off the top of my head I've only once ever run into a homebrew recipe requiring "xcodebuild" to proceed.
- daneel_w 3y ago
  If it's just git and the compiler environment ("SDK") you need then the command line developer tools suffice. The download is something like 700 MiB.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  Not if you use the Nix package manager: https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/ Before that though I used to only install command line tools. At some point though, I forgot the incantation for it and realized I could just use Nix for git as I was using it for other things already.
- acedTrex 3y ago
  no you don't. You just need the devtools which are like 2 gigs. I have developed on mac for years and have never had xcode installed.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    Or download the official git binary (https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/) if you don't even want devtools. Been a while since I did that, but there are plenty of other things I avoid building or downloading from a package manager (like NodeJS or Python).
    - nomel 3y ago
      > the official git binary Unfortunately, as the git website [1] states, these are fairly out of date (currently 2.33 from 2021-08-30). To get something recent, you have to build them yourself, which requires...devtools. Seems bizarre, to me, that they don't have them built automatically. [1] https://git-scm.com/download/mac https://git-scm.com/download/mac
      - hot_gril 3y ago
        Yeah, it's weird how out of date it is, but it also doesn't matter a lot. I think my laptop still has a version of git from 2018.
        nomel 3y ago
        Some tools, with git integration, require the newer versions. For example, newer PyCharm requires newer git.
        hot_gril 3y ago
        That makes sense.
tolmasky 3y ago
On one of my computers Xcode always seems to download... twice. I can't for the life of me figure out whether its doing some sort of "serial update" where if I miss a version in-between, it first downloads and installs that version, then immediately starts the latest one, or if its just a weird bug where it installs the latest version twice, consecutively, for no apparent reason. I've seen other people report this as well. I find it hard to believe its the "serial" explanation, as one of the few benefits of just downloading the entire program every single time is that it shouldn't need the intermediate diffs. So yeah, I have no idea what's going on. My other computer seems to not have this happen... yet?
- brookst 3y ago
  A few years ago I had a Mac that did that. Pretty sure it was because I actually had two Xcodes, one from the App Store and one downloaded from developer.apple.com.
snehk 3y ago
Do the updates still take forever on new hardware? I have a M1 MacMini and it feels like every update takes like three hours.
- oefrha 3y ago
  App Store (softwareupdated) takes forever to update Xcode for some reason. I suspect some accidental nonlinear behavior. Downloading Xcode.xip from https://developer.apple.com/downloads https://developer.apple.com/downloads and directly unpacking and replacing is way faster. Then I run a script to remove all the useless platforms.
  - selykg 3y ago
    This is the way I've always done it. Grab the package for manual install. Using the App Store version was always a massive pain.
klausa 3y ago
This is fixed in Xcode 15. The "absurd payload size" is the effect of having at least four different SDKs (macOS, watchOS, i[Pad]OS, tvOS) bundled, including a simulator for three of them. Xcode 15 is a ~3.5 gigs download, and includes only macOS SDKs, with all of the other (including the visionOS SDK + sim) ones being downloaded on-demand.
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  I swear delta updates were a thing at one point. When did that stop being the case?
  - kderbyma 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - dagmx 3y ago
      Upgrades are in place for Xcode. Your theory would only make (the most minimal of) sense for someone having multiple copies of Xcode, but in that case would be irrelevant to delta updates
  - klausa 3y ago
    They’re still A Thing for App Store apps I think, but: - using App Store for Xcode was historically very painful and ~nobody who uses Xcode daily downloads it from MAS - it never worked ~that well~ for Xcode anyway - apart from the big download sizes, the problem with Xcode and the bundled SDKs is that they’re all approximately trillion little text files, and it’s not unheard of to wait longer for codesign (technically unxip) verification than for the download itself, which negates the user-facing benefits of delta upgrades for many users.
    - macshome 3y ago
      I always use MAS to install my production Xcode, specifically because it lets me have small updates. I've been doing this for as long as it's been available there as a developer at Apple, in my own startup, and in my current role as well. Never had a problem with it.
duped 3y ago
Because "download too big" is a better problem than "what the fuck do I need to install to do XXX." XCode has the first problem, Visual Studio has both.
aequitas 3y ago
Maybe they shipped the installer pictures as uncompressed originals like they did a long time ago with some update I forgot the name of. But what resulted in a few MB update to be hundreds of MBs.
smoldesu 3y ago
There's something charmingly frustrating about typing "git" into the command line, and then waiting 4-5 hours for "Xcode Command-line Tools" to install.

nonethewiser 3y ago

That is crazy. Im also bitter that you basically need xcode for git on macOS

dubcanada 3y ago
You need the developer tools (like 2.5gb), or homebrew.
- murphyslaw 3y ago
  A lot of homebrew installs (those from code) require Apple's compile time stuff which only xcode has.
  - sigzero 3y ago
    You can only install the command line tools now. You don't need a full blown Xcode install.
  - daneel_w 3y ago
    No, you can build pretty much everything from homebrew using just the command line developer tools. It's been like that for 7-8 years, if not more. Off the top of my head I've only once ever run into a homebrew recipe requiring "xcodebuild" to proceed.
daneel_w 3y ago
If it's just git and the compiler environment ("SDK") you need then the command line developer tools suffice. The download is something like 700 MiB.
ParetoOptimal 3y ago
Not if you use the Nix package manager: https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/ Before that though I used to only install command line tools. At some point though, I forgot the incantation for it and realized I could just use Nix for git as I was using it for other things already.
acedTrex 3y ago
no you don't. You just need the devtools which are like 2 gigs. I have developed on mac for years and have never had xcode installed.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Or download the official git binary (https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/) if you don't even want devtools. Been a while since I did that, but there are plenty of other things I avoid building or downloading from a package manager (like NodeJS or Python).
  - nomel 3y ago
    > the official git binary Unfortunately, as the git website [1] states, these are fairly out of date (currently 2.33 from 2021-08-30). To get something recent, you have to build them yourself, which requires...devtools. Seems bizarre, to me, that they don't have them built automatically. [1] https://git-scm.com/download/mac https://git-scm.com/download/mac
    - hot_gril 3y ago
      Yeah, it's weird how out of date it is, but it also doesn't matter a lot. I think my laptop still has a version of git from 2018.
      - nomel 3y ago
        Some tools, with git integration, require the newer versions. For example, newer PyCharm requires newer git.
        hot_gril 3y ago
        That makes sense.

tolmasky 3y ago

On one of my computers Xcode always seems to download... twice. I can't for the life of me figure out whether its doing some sort of "serial update" where if I miss a version in-between, it first downloads and installs that version, then immediately starts the latest one, or if its just a weird bug where it installs the latest version twice, consecutively, for no apparent reason. I've seen other people report this as well. I find it hard to believe its the "serial" explanation, as one of the few benefits of just downloading the entire program every single time is that it shouldn't need the intermediate diffs. So yeah, I have no idea what's going on. My other computer seems to not have this happen... yet?

brookst 3y ago
A few years ago I had a Mac that did that. Pretty sure it was because I actually had two Xcodes, one from the App Store and one downloaded from developer.apple.com.

snehk 3y ago

Do the updates still take forever on new hardware? I have a M1 MacMini and it feels like every update takes like three hours.

oefrha 3y ago
App Store (softwareupdated) takes forever to update Xcode for some reason. I suspect some accidental nonlinear behavior. Downloading Xcode.xip from https://developer.apple.com/downloads https://developer.apple.com/downloads and directly unpacking and replacing is way faster. Then I run a script to remove all the useless platforms.
- selykg 3y ago
  This is the way I've always done it. Grab the package for manual install. Using the App Store version was always a massive pain.

klausa 3y ago

This is fixed in Xcode 15. The "absurd payload size" is the effect of having at least four different SDKs (macOS, watchOS, i[Pad]OS, tvOS) bundled, including a simulator for three of them. Xcode 15 is a ~3.5 gigs download, and includes only macOS SDKs, with all of the other (including the visionOS SDK + sim) ones being downloaded on-demand.

_aavaa_ 3y ago
I swear delta updates were a thing at one point. When did that stop being the case?
- kderbyma 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dagmx 3y ago
    Upgrades are in place for Xcode. Your theory would only make (the most minimal of) sense for someone having multiple copies of Xcode, but in that case would be irrelevant to delta updates
- klausa 3y ago
  They’re still A Thing for App Store apps I think, but: - using App Store for Xcode was historically very painful and ~nobody who uses Xcode daily downloads it from MAS - it never worked ~that well~ for Xcode anyway - apart from the big download sizes, the problem with Xcode and the bundled SDKs is that they’re all approximately trillion little text files, and it’s not unheard of to wait longer for codesign (technically unxip) verification than for the download itself, which negates the user-facing benefits of delta upgrades for many users.
  - macshome 3y ago
    I always use MAS to install my production Xcode, specifically because it lets me have small updates. I've been doing this for as long as it's been available there as a developer at Apple, in my own startup, and in my current role as well. Never had a problem with it.

duped 3y ago

Because "download too big" is a better problem than "what the fuck do I need to install to do XXX." XCode has the first problem, Visual Studio has both.

aequitas 3y ago

Maybe they shipped the installer pictures as uncompressed originals like they did a long time ago with some update I forgot the name of. But what resulted in a few MB update to be hundreds of MBs.

smoldesu 3y ago

There's something charmingly frustrating about typing "git" into the command line, and then waiting 4-5 hours for "Xcode Command-line Tools" to install.