Determine xcode command line tools version

Question

How do I determine what version(s) of xcode command line tools I have?

I tried doing

$ gcc --version
Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.1.0
Thread model: posix

Is the Apple LLVM version the same as the version of xcode command line tools?

Answer 1

Finding the CLI version number depends on the combination of which particular OS and which particular CLI Tools are installed. One of these should work:

On versions 10.9 and later (OS X Yosemite to macOS Monterey):

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables

on OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion):

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLI

Answer 2

I had XCode Commandline Tools installed for sure, but not XCode itself.

None of the available answers to get the version worked. pkgutil didn't give me the package of the XCode Commandline Tools, with none of the suggested package names.

Not having XCode installed (and having no need for it), I could not look in settings dialogs of that either.

xcode-select --version only gave me the version of xcode-select itself, with no clue as to the commandline tools version.

softwareupdate --list told me everything was up to date.

However I knew that my version must be out of date as the installer for one of homebrew packages told me so!

How I finally found out what version of the XCode Commandline Tools is installed I stumbled upon the command:

softwareupdate --history

Which listed 12.3 as the last version it updated...

Display Name                                       Version    Date                  
------------                                       -------    ----                  
Safari                                             14.0       04/11/2020, 12:26:12  
Command Line Tools for Xcode                       12.1       04/11/2020, 22:38:33  
Safari                                             14.0.2     15/12/2020, 16:38:27  
Safari                                             14.0.1     15/12/2020, 16:38:27  
Command Line Tools for Xcode                       12.3       15/12/2020, 16:38:27  
macOS Big Sur                                      11.2.1     14/02/2021, 20:57:56  
macOS Big Sur 11.2.2                               11.2.2     08/03/2021, 09:02:20  

So when you know for sure the commandline tools are installed (because, for instance, xcode-select --install tells you so) but none of the other methods works, check softwareupdate --history!

Answer 3

In terminal do

xcodebuild -version

Or, if you know the full path of xcodebuild, you can prepend that. In my case, I did

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild -version

example output:

Xcode 10.1
Build version 10B61

(adapted from https://www.garron.me/en/bits/what-xcode-version-am-i-running.html).

Answer 4

For versions of macOS X 10.9 Mavericks and later, this code will provide you the version of both Xcode and Command Line Tools for Xcode, if either are installed:

# Xcode
if pkgutil --pkgs=com.apple.pkg.Xcode >/dev/null; then
    echo Xcode: $(pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.Xcode | awk '/version:/ {print $2}')
else
    echo Xcode: not installed
fi

# Command Line Tools for Xcode
if pkgutil --pkgs=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables >/dev/null; then
    echo CommandLineTools: $(pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables | awk '/version:/ {print $2}')
else
    echo CommandLineTools: not installed
fi

Answer 5

For modern versions of xcode the command xcode-select --version will display the version number of command line tools, whether or not Xcode.app is installed.

I'm answering against the more recent version (where the tools actually are in the Xcode.app pkg), but I'm pretty sure that if the path & output returned by xcode-select -p, gcc -v, and llvm-gcc -v/clang -v are harmonious then they should be the same, i.e.

$ xcode-select -p
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

$ gcc -v
Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0
Thread model: posix

$ llvm-gcc -v
Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0
Thread model: posix

$ clang -v
Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.3.0
Thread model: posix

Note that llvm-gcc is a link to clang,

$ls -al /usr/bin/llvm-gcc
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  5 Oct 19  2014 /usr/bin/llvm-gcc -> clang

so the output of llvm-gcc -v and clang -v should be identical although that may or may not be the case for you (see https://stackoverflow.com/a/5708732/602581 for some more details)

Answer 6

Here's a nice way I've found to scriptify things,

BUILD_TOOL_PATH=$(xcode-select -p)

if [[ ${BUILD_TOOL_PATH} == "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer" ]]; then
    BUILD_TOOL_VER=$(xcodebuild -version | /usr/bin/grep "Xcode" | sed -e 's/Xcode //' | cut -d. -f1)
elif [[ ${BUILD_TOOL_PATH} == "/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools" ]]; then
    BUILD_TOOL_VER=$(pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables | /usr/bin/grep "version" | sed -e 's/version: //' | cut -d. -f1)
else
    echo "Error: On macOS, either Xcode or the Command Line Tools must be installed!"
    exit 1
fi

Obviously, you can remove the else/error condition. If you need to do something for a specific version of Xcode/CLT (relevant to the time of this answer), you can for example,

if [[ ${BUILD_TOOL_VER} -ge 15 ]]; then
    export LDFLAGS="-Wl,-ld_classic"
fi

Answer 7

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables | grep version

Works for Montery (OS 12.xx)