Why was I prompted to install developer tools? "c++filt" command
Why did this happen? A window popped up prompting me to install... not sure if this is safe or not.
Mac mini, macOS 11.1
Question marked as
If you have no Apple developer tools (e.g. Xcode, command-line tools for Xcode) installed, and you type something in the Terminal that is interpreted as a compiiler (or script) command, and there is nothing installed to respond to it, you will be prompted to install the Command-line tools for Xcode. This is about 2GB of storage when installed, and does nothing if you are not doing development.
If you enter python3 on the command-line, there is no python3 executable installed by default with the operating system — but the Apple Command-line tools for Xcode do install a stripped down Python3 scripting environment (first time starting with Catalina). Similarly, if you typed C++ anything, although the same development tools do not install any binary by that name (e.g.cc, c++, gcc, g++, clang, clang++, swift, swiftc), it will still trigger the installation prompt — and probably should not.
