Smaller download for people who don't need them?

Rather than distributing two copies of the tools (one with Xcode, and the (awesome) new CLI only tool distribution), they DRY it up and have one canonical package for everyone, reducing testing, packaging overhead, possibility for divergence between the two packages, etc, etc?

Good answer. I was lazy and didn't notice the CLI-only distro. Thanks-

man xcrun man xcode-select

The tools are already available, just not in the normal path locations. Also if you are modifying the files installed by the CLT installer such that they get messed up you are doing it wrong.

Because an enormous number of developers have no desire to use Xcode and are annoyed at having to download 1.3GB Xcode to get `gcc`.

Well, if XCode can serve its purpose (build and debug OS X apps) without the CLI, why should it have them included?