Something that really bothers me about OS X is that in order to install something from the source, Apple wants you to download it’s whole developer toolkit – XCode. That’s great if you’re a developer who needs to compile a bunch of C++ and Fortran programs all the time.
But if you’re just trying to install something like the new version of Gimp, which is currently only available in the form of source code right now, downloading the full 2Gb of XCode is really a waste of time and space.
Fortunately, there’s a ridiculously simple solution to getting GCC installed without downloading Apple’s development toolkit, thanks to the guys at High Performance Computing.
Here goes…
First, you’ll need to grab the actual program – gcc-lion.tar
When it’s finished downloading, don’t extract the archive – move it to your home directory. It’s not entirely necessary, but we’ll just keep things simple to avoid any confusion with this tutorial.
Now it’s time to fire up the terminal, which is found in Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app.
Once you’re in the terminal, make sure you’re in the home directory – just type cd and hit enter.
Note: if you’re running Snow Leopard, you’ll need to set up the “/usr/local/bin” directory so the terminal can find it:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Now it’s time to extract the .tar file and get everything installed – simply copy and paste this line of code into the terminal and hit enter:
sudo tar -xvf gcc-lion.tar -C /
It’s as easy as that. You’re now ready to install those apps from source code or get into some C programming.
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