macOS XCode Installation Question

[johnjay1776]

I purchased an external drive with the intent of using one partition on it to house any and all development related tools. I plan on moving this drive between my iMac and my MacBook.

The idea was to have the development environment completely contained within the partition of the external drive. However, I briefly read the XCode installation instruction and came across mention of the fact that the installation process does stash some items in /usr.

Is what I'm trying to do here even feasible? I have to think that it is. I would like to install Xcode to this external partition on the MacBook but I also realize that I would have to somehow make the iMac "aware" of the applications on the external partition. Comments?

 

[toddburch]

I would install Xcode on the permanent harddrive on both machines, and keep all your projects on the moveable drive.

 

[johnjay1776]

I would install Xcode on the permanent harddrive on both machines, and keep all your projects on the moveable drive.

That's certainly an option but I really liked the concept of separating the development environment from the OS environment. Keeping all of the projects and development tools in one portable partition is a very attractive notion for me because the OS environment stays "clean".

 

[johnjay1776]

No one has any further input on this? Seems like it would be something others have done/wanted to do ... Thanks.

 

[gnasher729]

That's certainly an option but I really liked the concept of separating the development environment from the OS environment. Keeping all of the projects and development tools in one portable partition is a very attractive notion for me because the OS environment stays "clean".

Several hundred thousand developers don't care about this. Why do you?

 

[TheReef]

The installer doesn't even let you do this…it must be installed on the startup disk.

My only suggestion would be to install Mac OS X on the external drive, then boot from it from whichever computer your using (also solves your user problem).

 

[johnjay1776]

Several hundred thousand developers don't care about this. Why do you?

Wow, you're right. I'm an idiot. Incredibly helpful response.

 

[johnjay1776]

Answer

I knew based on an earlier cursory search of these forums that at least one other person had asked this question before so I thought I'd go ahead and post what I found out after digging around a little more. This might help those that want to keep their development environment as separated as possible from the standard OS environment or perhaps those that are short on disk space.

It turns out that this can be done with XCode version 3.1.1 (possibly earlier versions?) but only if you don't install the UNIX command line portion of XCode as it has portions that install themselves into /usr. The portions that install themselves into /usr can not be redirected to another location.

 

[johnjay1776]

Correction

Can't be done. It's boot volume or nothing. You can put XCode into a different directory but if it's not on the boot volume, forget it.