How do I uninstall xcode 5 command line tools?

Question

I upgraded to xcode 5 Command Line Tools on Friday. Something is not working correctly and I want to go back to the last 4.x version ox xcode. How do I uninstall xcode 5 command line tools? I don't see anything in the release notes.

Answer 1

Depending on whether you are running Xcode 5 in Mavericks or not, you will need to do two different things to uninstall the command line tools.

• In Mavericks, Xcode includes its own copy of the Command line tools (i.e. they are bundled as part of Xcode.app). Therefore, uninstalling the Xcode (check instructions below) will remove the Command line tools too.

• For older Mac OSX versions running Xcode 5 or older versions (Xcode 4.x), you can find previous SO answers which explain how to uninstall Xcode's command line tool. You can use this script (Read more about it in this post):

  # remove_CLI_tools.sh
  # written by cocoanetics:http://www.cocoanetics.com/2012/07/you-dont-need-the-xcode-command-line-tools/
  # modified by yoneken
  
  #!/bin/sh
  
  RECEIPT_FILE1=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.DevSDK.bom
  RECEIPT_PLIST1=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.DevSDK.plist
  RECEIPT_FILE2=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.clang.bom
  RECEIPT_PLIST2=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.clang.plist
  RECEIPT_FILE3=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.llvm-gcc4.2.bom
  RECEIPT_PLIST3=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.llvm-gcc4.2.plist
  RECEIPT_FILE4=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLI.bom
  RECEIPT_PLIST4=/var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLI.plist
  
  if [ ! -f "$RECEIPT_FILE4" ]
  then
    echo "Command Line Tools not installed."
    exit 1
  fi
  
  echo "Command Line Tools installed, removing ..."
  
  # Need to be at root
  cd /
  
  # Remove files and dirs mentioned in the "Bill of Materials" (BOM)
  lsbom -fls $RECEIPT_FILE1 $RECEIPT_FILE2 $RECEIPT_FILE3 $RECEIPT_FILE4 | sudo xargs -I{} rm -r "{}"
  
  # remove the receipt
  sudo rm $RECEIPT_FILE1 $RECEIPT_FILE2 $RECEIPT_FILE3 $RECEIPT_FILE4
  
  # remove the plist
  sudo rm $RECEIPT_PLIST1 $RECEIPT_PLIST2 $RECEIPT_PLIST3 $RECEIPT_PLIST4
  
  echo "Done! Please restart XCode to have Command Line Tools appear as uninstalled."
  

You can run this easily by opening a Terminal and running this command (it will download the script and execute it automatically):

curl "https://gist.github.com/yoneken/3284561/raw/db665bb64f93e38ce138b5ca620b9edd18dc31e4/remove_CLI_tools.sh" | sh

If everything worked fine, you could open Xcode and see that the Command Line Tools appear as to be installed.

Then, depending on what you want, you could downgrade Xcode to a lower version and reinstall the Command Line Tools for that version, for example.

To downgrade Xcode, as explained in this SO answer:

1. Uninstall Xcode 5: go to /Applications and delete the Xcode app.
2. Restart the Mac.
3. Then you can download the desired Xcode version from here and install it from scratch.

Answer 2

I stumbled upon this while trying to uninstall Command Line Tools v6.

I had the full Xcode 6 installed, but moving Xcode to trash did NOT uninstall/delete CLT as well. I still had /usr/bin/clang for example. The solution was to manually remove CLT using the .bom contents (similar to @veducm's answer):

cd /
lsbom -fls /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables.bom | sudo xargs -I{} rm -rf "{}"
lsbom -fls /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.DevSDK_OSX109.bom | sudo xargs -I{} rm -rf "{}"
sudo rm /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.{CLTools_Executables,DevSDK_OSX109}.{bom,plist}

Replace DevSDK_OSX109 with the version you have. You may have multiple ones, in which case, apply the same command to all of them (e.g. I had both DevSDK_OSX109 and DevSDK_OSX1010 because I had installed CLT for Mavericks and Yosemite too).

NOTE: This will delete the files listed in the .bom. You can view the contents them first by doing just lsbom -fls /var/db/receipts/com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables.bom etc if you are unsure.

NOTE2: You need the cd / since paths reported by lsbom are relative. You can also remove CLT by simply doing rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools.