Install Xcode after the Xcode Command Line Tools: Possible?

Using Swift
, ,
1

Hello,
I have already installed the Xcode Command Line Tools on my Mac, which already include Swift. My terminal tells me that I have Swift as well:

% swift --version
Apple Swift version 5.9 (swiftlang-5.9.0.128.108 clang-1500.0.40.1)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin23.1.0

Now I once read somewhere that you should not install the Xcode Command Line Tools and Xcode in parallel or install them one after the other. However, I have no idea whether this is true?
I wanted to start programming Swift and Xcode is supposed to be THE tool of choice for this.

How do I deal with my situation?
The official website only recommends installing Xcode. But no mention of what to do if you already have the Xcode command line tools. However, I don't want to break anything.

Can you help me with this?

2

Not sure who told you that but they can be installed in any order. Really you may not even need the command line tools if you do everything in Xcode.

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3

@Jon_Shier Thank you! Can I then uninstall the command line tools and then install Xcode?

If so, is it still correct that I uninstall the command line tools completely (!) by deleting the

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

folder?

4

Looks safe to me. Followed by a restart just in case.

Interestingly I found two copies of MacOSX SDK, one in:

/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/

and another in

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/

It's just 281 MB folder so not a big deal.

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5

One further tidbit: If you have more than one set of command-line tools installed — from either the Command Line Tools package or some number of Xcode apps — use xcode-select to see and select which one get used by default.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ DTS @ Apple

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