Agreed that this is a pain, but _much_ less so than getting a working compiler/paths/libs/etc on Windows for doing Ruby work. (Unless you go with an all-in-one installer...)

Oh, Windows is much, much worse. ;) I just wouldn't lay blame on Ruby/Python etc. communities for the vagaries and whims of OS shops.

>The simple fact that you need Xcode's SDK and homebrew/macports on a machine to get anything done outside of Xcode speaks volumes for using Mac's as development workstations (or, specifically, MacOS).

What does that even mean (besides being incorrect)?

How is the situation different in, say, Windows? Can you compile C/C++ stuff out of the box?

Or Linux, for that matter. In a lot of distros, gcc, make and co have to be installed -- they are not part of the default install.

As for the incorrect part: you don't need XCode. You can just install the "command line tools" package from Apple, that contains compilers, headers etc.

For me, the worst part was having gxx symlinked to clang. What happened was, the first time I had to compile software that needed real gxx, I went fiddling with paths and symlinks to get that software working. Then, months later, I had to compile something that needed clang, so I fiddled some more, and just for kicks, tried to keep track, so I could compile the original software that required gxx. That all worked fine, if painful and time consuming.

Later, I was surprised to find the Ruby Gems use gxx, make, and autoconf. I thought it was a pure Ruby code package manager, that would just tell me to install some native library if it wasn't there, but no, it wants to download and build for itself using gxx.

Your comment is one of my least favorite parts of HN. You read your own bias into my comment. I said:

"You would have similar issues with almost any other language and environment."

This includes Linux, Windows etc. I singled out MacOS as it was relevant to the parent comment. And, as for "incorrect", I think "command-line tools" and SDK could likely be used interchangeably in this context and saying otherwise is splitting hairs.