update command line tools about mas HOT 1 CLOSED

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TL;DR: mas is only able to install/update applications that are listed in the Mac App Store itself. Use softwareupdate(8) utility for downloading system updates (including Xcode CLT).

The point of confusion is that Mac App Store provides updates not only for installed applications but also for system components such as Xcode Command Line Tools, iTunes, etc. These actually have nothing to do with MAS itself (it's just used as a nice user-friendly interface), so mas can't deal with them.

Luckily for us, there's a built-in utility softwareupdate which is able to list new system software updates and install them via command line interface 👌🏼

Here's an example output of softwareupdate -l:

$ softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool
Copyright 2002-2015 Apple Inc.

Finding available software
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * Command Line Tools (macOS Sierra version 10.12) for Xcode-8.1
    Command Line Tools (macOS Sierra version 10.12) for Xcode (8.1), 123638K [recommended]
   * iTunesXPatch-12.5.2
    iTunes (12.5.2), 145964K [recommended]

The man page for this tool contains even more information and usage examples.

from mas.