and what purpose do they serve upon installation?
I can find no information on the developer site (or anywhere else) for that matter
kind regards
Hi again,
The following is an excellent introduction by Topher Kessler. Linking on these forums automatically causes posts to spend days in moderation, so I've copied the explaination here for you:
"Sometimes you might try to run a program on your Mac, and encounter a message that states you need to install the command line developer tools. The message will then have options to install the tools, cancel the request, or get Apple’s XCode software package. If you encounter this warning, you may wonder whether or not the command line tools are genuine and whether or not your system’s security might be compromised by installing them.
This message happens because of the lack of Apple’s developer tools on your Mac. Apple’s development tools (ie, its XCode suite) are provided separately from OS X, and are made available for free in the App Store. They allow programmers to compile programs and debug them, convert files, and perform a number of tasks for handling the resources required for making applications and other tools.
Running the Terminal-based developer tool “make” on a system without the command line tools installed will prompt you to install them.
While Apple’s XCode software package contains most of what is needed to create OS X applications, software development before XCode required vast uses of the Terminal (or command-line) and there are still many developers and projects that make heavy use of this approach. For this purpose, even though XCode contains all development tools in one package, Apple provides the ability to install the command line tools separately from or instead of XCode.
Even though these tools are generally used in the development process only, some programs may require one or two of them when running. Since they are not installed by default, when such programs are run, or if you try to run any of the command line tools manually, OS X will detect these attempts and then prompt you to install either XCode or the command line tools package.
While security is a valid concern, and while I recommend you avoid installing any tools or utilities that you do not need, having these tools installed will not compromise the security of your Mac. They will only add some additional functionality, such as programming capabilities, file conversion, and other useful features, and if you do not use these features directly then the tools will sit benignly on your system.
While the latest command line tools for OS X will be downloaded if you choose the option to install them, you can also download the latest tools and install them manually from Apple’s developer Web site (requires a free Developer ID). With these available, if you are concerned about the genuineness of the message that pops up, you can download and install these tools and then try running your program again. If the message was genuine then it should no longer appear."
Max.