TL;DR: If the standard terminal commands don’t work for uninstalling and reinstalling the Xcode CLI tools, use this page and search for the latest version of the tools to download. You don’t need a developer account to access it.

If you work both in a terminal and on a Mac, then you’re likely familiar with the Xcode Command Line Tools (and the necessary utilities they provide for things like Git, building front-end assets, etc.).

Click again to start watching. After trying multiple time, I still can not get command line tools installed on OS 10.15.2 (19C57). Sudo xcode- select -reset. Xcode- select -install. Restarted OS couple of times, repeated steps above. Mac users with macOS Mojave and macOS Catalina, and new operating systems in place can now install Command Line Tools from the Xcode IDE without needing to install the entire Xcode package, or opening an Apple developers account. Turns out I was on an older version of clang despite both of us running the same version of macOS Catalina. Though you install the command line tools using xcode-select -install, there’s no way to force a reinstall with the tool as rerunning the command will tell you xcode-select: error: command line tools are already installed, use. The command line interface on macOS is very similar, and the concepts in that tutorial are directly applicable. Now that you have the Terminal running, let’s install some additional tools that Homebrew needs. Step 2 — Installing Xcode’s Command Line Tools. Finally, I explain how to Uninstall Xcode Command Line Tools, Reinstall Xcode Command Line Tools, and provide a List of Xcode Command Line Tools that you can use. There's also a complete guide to Install Homebrew for Mac that explains how to Update Homebrew, Uninstall Homebrew, and keep up with other Housekeeping for Homebrew.

If you’re not familiar, here’s the gist:

[Command Line Tools] enables UNIX-style development via Terminal by installing command line developer tools, as well ass macOS SDK frameworks and headers. Many useful tools are included such as the Apple eLLVM compiler, linker, and Make.

Obviously, I’m not an iOS or a macOS developer, but there’s plenty of work that I do in the terminal and I need some of these tools for.

Xcode CLI Tools Won’t Install

Recently, I was faced with a situation in which the standard methods of uninstalling and reinstalling the command line tools didn’t work. (That is, I was looking to use $ xcode-select --install to set up the tools after removing them for reasons outside the point of this post.)

And when I say that I’m looking to install them, I mean doing so after removing anytrace of them on the system. And this includes referencing steps also outlined in the following pages:

Reinstall Xcode Command Line Tools Catalina

In short: I was stuck in a position that I needed to get the CLI tools reinstalled, installed at the latest version, and installed as fast as possible.

Install Xcode Command Line Tools Catalina

And thus, back to the initial paragraph of this post: Use this page and search for the latest version of the tools to download. It’ll provide a dmg file for download and it’ll resolve it quickly.