I started using nix. It’s difficult and search results are not often helpful.
Nox is much easier interface to nix. I often use that instead of nix-env.
Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
81–90 of 314 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#82nix. It's confusing, but we'll get there. You'll need/want: - nix, the tool/build system. - nixpkgs, the world's most up-to-date and underfunded package repository. - nix-darwin, bringing a NixOS experience to Darwin. Not perfect, but pretty damn great. And optionally, - home-manager, a nix-based opinionated tool to manage dotfiles and other stuff in your home directory. And finally, some things to avoid and experime…
So you're saying use nix flakes instead of `nix env -i`? I've been using `nix env -i` without any issues till now, but I'll explore nix flakes.
nix-env -i package by package? I think the next step in the journey is describing what you've got installed with a package: https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-declarative-pac...
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#83A 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.
It's hard to pinpoint what the problem really is, but me and a few colleagues had corrupted brew installations lately, where various things would just randomly stop working after updating a single package.
The trick of disabling auto updates doesn't really work when you do want things to be updated. Sometimes there are conflicts and the usual path was to upgrade everything.
Not that it matters: it seems that the usual "upgrade everything" from 2 years ago has changed into "delete every folder and reinstall everything from scratch".
Also, a few years ago, updating everything or reinstalling lots of things from scratch was fast. Now, it requires much more time due to the massive number of dependencies every single package has.
Also, the maintainers have a super weird aversion to everything that is "too simple". I've seen packages rejected because "the build process was too simple and there are no dependencies". The excuse was that "users can build it themselves". This is not for silly stuff random people wrote on weekend, this is for 20 year old tools used in production written in C.
I can't say for certain why or how it got worse for other people, but for me it started when they doubled down on dynamic linking. That's why installing takes 5x the time it used to, takes more disk space, breaks all the time and makes organising your tools a fucking mess.
As for me: I've replaced most of my Brew usage with Docker (for most development tools) or with static binaries compiled weekly using Github Actions (for cli tools like youtube-dl, etc). I'm also using download links straight from language websites (Rust, Ruby, Python, DotNet, Haskell).
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#84I didn’t think brew upgrade d packages automatically? Just update d the index? Am I missing something here?
They have a separate env var with language that matches OP's experience: HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_UPGRADE If set, brew install will not automatically upgrade installed but outdated formulae https://docs.brew.sh/Manpage#HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_UPGRADE (that's a fake hyperlink cause they don't put named anchors on their for some reason) updated with an actual hyperlink : https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/3.3.2/docs/Manpage.…
Wow, terrible misfeature. Why is that the default? I could maybe understand it if it were just dependencies, but upgrading everything is insane.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#85I have moved to Nix on two of my three machines – the two laptops have Archlinux32 and MacOS Mojave. I should replace Homebrew installed packages with Nix packages on my desktop iMac too, but in the mean time I have used Macports and some Nix packages for installing new packages.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#86I could not get Postgres installed through NixDarwin, so I installed with Postgres.app for MacOS. With it you can easily manage Postgres versions.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#87I started using nix. It’s difficult and search results are not often helpful.
you can search via web interface - https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=nixpkgs-unstable
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#88I just reached the same breaking point -- and normally I am pretty sympathetic to software jank, but the maintainer of homebrew is so actively hostile and rude that my degree of empathy is significantly less -- and switched to Nix, which is quite good, conditional on three gotchas: 1. Nix has very limited support for GUI applications of the kind that you'd find in `brew cask`. Not no support, some of them are there,…
What’s an actual concrete example of a problem you have with homebrew?
Here's my previously posted actual concrete example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903499
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#89Earlier 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.
But Homebrew didn't used to be that way when I started using it. And with some fairly small changes it could go a really long way to supporting more users. TBH if I had the time, I would roll up my sleeves and do it myself.
The whole reason that I used Homebrew to begin with in 2014 was to help mitigate these problems.
I think there has been a cultural shift away from being more useful for a larger base of users, to being optimal and "clean".
The least it could do is confirm before it makes irreversible and sometimes breaking changes to your system. I don't see any good reason to delete your distfiles after potentially installing an incompatible package. And compared to most Linux based package managers, Homebrew makes big changes to its interface frequently, which makes it a headache to keep up with. Just look at how much casks have changed in the last two years.
Anyway, when I felt I could no longer rely on Homebrew, that was the last straw for me dumping macOS.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#90I'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.
Postgres from Homebrew used to work extremely well. It was faster and more reliable than Docker, not to mention lighter on your machine.
Now, it's unusable.