I switched to devbox about a month ago after reading some comments on here about it, so far I couldn't be happier with it. It's certainly blazing fast, but also manages versions better, supports multiple users on the same machine, installs stuff to a sane location etc. https://www.jetify.com/devbox
Ask HN: Is there a [blazing fast] alternative to homebrew for macOS yet?
21–22 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there a [blazing fast] alternative to homebrew for macOS yet?
#22I wouldn't call Nix 'blazing fast'; I wish Nix evaluation were 10x as fast as it is. But for many things it's much faster than Homebrew and has a lot of nice properties besides.
Pkgsrc is more conventional, and its package set is smaller. But the binary distribution of it from Joyent is is consistently quite fast, and the package quality in Pkgsrc is high. It's a fast, well-behaved package manager, and probably the closest thing to what you're looking for unless your main concern is macOS GUI applications.