Why doesn't gcc come with OS X?

It sounds like your real complaint is: Why is the developer tools install so big? Maybe you should have written about that instead of the *false* claim that gcc doesn't come with the OS. It does come on the same DVD, it's just an optional install. Ya, it uses up disk space. Deal. Especially in this era of multi-hundred gigabyte disks!

Uh, yeah. I just got a new PowerMac about 2-3 months ago, and gcc/developer tools were installed by default; gcc from the command line worked fine.

Also, Fabienne (the author) seems to disdain the "older versions of gcc" - while failing to recognize very few people have made the move up to gcc 4.x. It's not by any means the standard - most devs wait until a x.1 release or above to know that all the compiler bugs have been fixed.

* it bootstraps itself to compile itself this post should probably just be deleted and forgotten, its been proved that gcc has been coming with OSX for a long time now and is simply not part of the standard installation by default.

TUAW, Please spare us such uninformed rants. Thanks. Alex P.S. As much as I love your site, recently the quality hasn't been up to your standards guys. Sometimes less is more. Gives us few good articles rather than a plethora of junk bits. Thanks.

ROTFLM... Dude, Everyone, This guy doesn't have a clue, as you all say. But Apple knows who he is, and they MADE HIM and ONLY HIM register, because they wanted to KEEP TRACK OF HIM. Hehehe. I be Sony is watching him too. Anyhow, he is correct that you have to register with Apple to download the lastest version of the developer tools, but all of the 'non-apple tools' are freely available many places on the net. and to top it all off, i think i should let him know that he can always download the source and compile it by hand =P. He's not a Troll. He's not Trolling. He's a Tool, And He's Tooling Hey, Join ADC for $500 or $3000 and you can have the cd's mailed to you, you can get a discount on 1 or 10 machines per year, and you can have access to pre-release versions of the OS - legally. There are lots of other extras too. If you are a Student, then you should join the Student Dev for $99 Cheers, and glad you got it either way. I think Apple will mail you the CD for $20 if you want.

Look, let's all calm down. The poster's point: why must I install Xcode just to get gcc into my system? Reality: you can actually install only gcc without installing Xcode. All you have to do is to double click on the right .pkg in your Tiger DVD (it's under the Developer Tools directory). There's no need to be rude about it. The poster was wrong--but we can tell him gently.

S E C U R I T Y ! ! ! ! For security purposes, never install a compiler on a machine that doesn't need it. Most script-kiddie hacks are distributed as source code which must be compiled. By leaving out gcc, apple makes local root (privilege escalation) hacks harder to achieve. Cross-compilation is still possible, but requires more skill.

Fink http://fink.sourceforge.net/ Allows you to install GCC independently. http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/gcc4

"With an operating system that... touts itself as one built on UNIX you would think a C compiler would come standard." Commercial Unices tended to package the C compiler separately, and charge extra for it. It's only really since the rise of open source Unix that people have expected a compiler to be included with the default kit -- probably because you traditionally needed to recompile the Linux kernel before it would do anything useful.