Does Homebrew require XCode?  If so then speed of package installs is 
insignificant by comparison.

If not then I'll give it a try-- that would reduce the total time to build from 1 day to 
something less obnoxious.

Yes and no. Yes in that you need to install the Xcode Commandline Tools (aka gcc/clang, make, git, etc) and No in that you do not need to download and install the whole Xcode GUI app & tools if you’re only building things on the command line.

As of OSX 10.8 or so, you can run the following to install the commandline tools:

    xcode-select —install

This will open a dialog box where you can click “Install”. There is no need for a login, or App Store, or whatever.

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Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com

On Oct 10, 2016, at 7:31 AM, Jonathan Wilkes <jancsika@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thank you. /usr/local always seems iffy to me, but this is after years in linux
> making sure to make packages to install any software via package manager. The
> thing I liked about macport's /opt, which is actually something of a standard for
> non-pacakge-managed software in linux, is that it's relatively encapsulated
> away from the rest of the directory structure. But as long as it does a reasonable
> job of uninstalling everything in a package it should be fine.