Git not working after macOS update: invalid active developer path

Oct 29, 2019   Update: Aug 28, 2021

So you recently updated to the latest macOS and ran a git status only to be greeted with:

xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools), missing xcrun at: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/xcrun

What happened? Did the update completely mess up your Git installation?

Worry not, the fix is very simple; you just need to update the Xcode Command-line Tools. So run this:

$ xcode-select --install

You will then be greeted with this prompt:

Click "Install" and agree to the "Commandline Tools License Agreement" in the following window. The update is about 130 MB, wait for it to complete.

Once done, git will continue to work as usual.

If the above steps didn't solve your problem, run this additional command:

$ xcode-select --reset

This problem is manifested in Visual Studio Code as "vscode Git not found. Install it or configure it using the 'git.path' setting." No amount of configuring in VSC is going to help you, because the problem is not invalid or missing git path, but git itself not working.

The solution described earlier will fix the problem in VSC too.

Summary#

macOS updates do not update the Xcode Command-line Tools by default. Unless it is updated many command-line tools like git will fail to work. It can be updated using xcode-select --install.

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