Do I need to uninstall Xcode 4 to install Xcode 5?

Question

I have Xcode 4.6.3 installed on OS X 10.8.5. What is the correct way to install Xcode 5? Is it necessary to uninstall 4 first or simply overwrite it?

Naturally, I wish to preserve my current settings.

Answer 1

I renamed Xcode 4.6.3 to Xcode4.app then installed Xcode 5 as the default Xcode.app, Keeping both versions available. It good practice to verify which Xcode is your default using Xcode-select.

gdunham: ~$ xcode-select --print-path
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

example:
    # switch to Xcode 4.6.3
    xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode4.app/Contents/Developer

As the others have stated Xcode is a complete self contained package. The SDK's and new tools are contained inside the package contents. Because of this you don't need to install the command line tools just to use git, etc. You can set up aliases and use xcrun to access the command line tool inside the Xcode package

gdunham: ~$ alias git='xcrun git'
gdunham: ~$ git --version
git version 1.8.3.4 (Apple Git-47)

You personal settings are stored in your user account ~/Library/Application Support/Xcode so they should not change.

Xcode documentations sets are stored here ~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets and shared.

Answer 2

You can install Xcode 5 without overwriting Xcode 4. Each copy of Xcode will be a unique path in your /Applications folder.

Answer 3

On my machine, I've put my copy of Xcode 4 into a folder I've named "Xcode4".

Then Xcode5 (which is named Xcode.app, just as Xcode4 is) goes where the last version of Xcode went.

The SDK's and everything else are embedded within each Xcode application package.

Answer 4

There is nothing as such any problem in keeping Xcode 4 and Xcode 5. Each of these Xcode has unique path in .../Applications directory.

I'm using both Xcode 4 and 5. There haven't any problem in using these. Only you can use one Simulator at a time.

Also, the problem that may arise is applications build using Xcode 5 might not open in Xcode 4. Since the changes done in XIB file in Xcode 5 doesn't recognized in Xcode 4. Check-out this link for the same XIB could be read issue

Hope this might help!