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Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

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Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#111

Post by kergonath »

yakkers wrote: post #52

I've personally had very good experiences switching back from Homebrew to MacPorts. Wouldn't go back to Homebrew. I find it much faster now, which is quite funny to me because back when Homebrew was new (and a lot less opinionated) it was much faster than MacPorts, especially with the bottles (binary packages) feature. Today, MacPorts has binary packages, doesn't randomly force incredibly slow updates when I just wan…

> I've personally had very good experiences switching back from Homebrew to MacPorts. Wouldn't go back to Homebrew.

I have been much happier with Macports than with Homebrew (which I try every other year to see if it’s improved).

> The only pain point I've found is upgrading to new macOS releases, though I've often found just reinstalling MacPorts itself will get me going again in a pinch without having to take inventory of my installed ports and reinstall everything from scratch.

I used to use the commands suggested on the Macports website (save the list of installed packages to a file; update OS; install Macports; re-install ports). But since a couple of upgrades I have decided to use this as an opportunity to get rid of ports I don’t actually need.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#113

Post by wg0 »

There are some tips which others might already have alluded to:

1. Python has built in virtual environment support. python -m venv should do the trick. 2. Use docker for running Postgres, MySQL etc with some directory mounted for data.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#114

Post by thrwn_frthr_awy »

civilized wrote: post #60

A lot of the usual "it's bad" "it's not bad for me" discourse in these threads. Could people raise the bar a bit and talk about specific problems they have had with homebrew - other than the auto-update, which we've already noted can be changed by setting HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1? Thanks.

One thing has ruined my week is running brew upgrade $package instead of brew update $package. One of those commands will update the package and the other with update everything you’ve ever installed with Homebrew.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#117

Post by rrock »

sswastioyono18 wrote: post #79

I'm surprised people still use postgresql from homebrew. Like honestly, I use brew for any CLI command only like zsh and git. Well maybe some programming language as well but I would never, ever install database with it unless I'm desperate. Anything that can be dockerized, just use docker.

You’re right. Some of us only realized our mistake when it was too late.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#118

Post by dan353hehe »

leonry wrote: post #2

I cannot remember why, but I chose pkgsrc ( https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-osx/ ). It is however of varying quality.

I have also used it. I switched once homebrew installed conflicting versions of OpenSSL and wasted weeks of time trying to get both MySQL and vim working at the same time.

It is rough around the edges as some packages are missing if I remember right.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#119

Post by rbanffy »

geraneum wrote: post #59
vr46 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find Mike McQuaid pretty reasonable and forthright whenever I have ever messaged him. Also, he is hardly responsible for every formula out there. For anyone who remembers the year 2000 and having to compile everything from scratch, Homebrew is brilliant - but there are complexities and quirks. For Python I’d go with pyenv. Postgres - well, watch your step and maybe use Docker instead.

For PostgreSQL on macOS I use and suggest https://postgresapp.com/ which is free and able to manage multiple Postgres major versions. It's also self-contained in a folder in /Applications. Also, version 14 of Postgres in the app has m1 native support.

For “infrastructure” apps like databases, caches, etc, I’ve been using Docker containers. Very easy to setup and tear down in a repeatable way. Unless I’m modifying the app itself, of course.

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#120

Post by dahart »

EamonnMR wrote: post #75
apostacy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homebrew stinks of over-optimization and deletionism. In contrast to how it used to be, Homebrew now seems designed for people that only want popular bleeding edge packages, and nobody else. If I just wanted to install google-chrome, sublime, and skype, I would use the app store. I used to use Homebrew to install more obscure packages that were useful to me, like Arduino, Processing, and some specialized bluetooth to…

I feel your pain, but can't help blaming Apple rather than Homebrew. They made an OS that users can't bear to upgrade because of removed features, homebrew is merely following their lead and focusing on bleeding edge users. Maybe the logic is: if you don't want constant churn you wouldn't be on a mac.

> They made an OS that users can't bear to upgrade because of removed features

I thought the story was that Apple had a problem with GNU licensing, and that was the reason everything got locked to ~2007 software, forcing everyone who wants to use bash and GNU utils to resort to a package manager.

Yeah… googling it, people have long been saying GPL v3 is what Apple has a problem with:

http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18653485

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