title: GCC without Xcode on OS X
body: <p>I've just unwrapped my new MacBook Pro (<em>yay</em>!) and am now setting it up properly for development. Since I want to avoid clutter, I'm wondering if I really need to install the Xcode tools at all (I never use the IDE or Mac specific tools), since I'll install a newer version of GCC anyway, using <a href="http://www.macports.org/" rel="noreferrer">MacPorts</a>.</p>
  
  <p>So, is there any benefit in installing Xcode? Is it necessary? What kind of set-up does it do behind the scenes? Basically: <strong>can I skip this or will it come back to haunt me because some Unix development tools just assume that OS X is always set up in this way?</strong></p>