One vote in favor of macports here. I first went from homebrew to nix. Nix was fine, the concept is great but I found the language to be difficult. Ports is closer to homebrew in its simplicity, and has a big catalog (including much of the scientific stack that was removed from homebrew).
Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
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Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#92> At this point I should know better than to install postgres via homebrew. No. At this point you should know better and read the documentation. Whatever you switch to next, you are going to have similar issues and surprises.
I've had big Postgres issues with Homebrew. I've never had "similar issues and surprises" with Postgres.app.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#93After years of dealing with it I just run most of the software from docker containers and use homebrew for random cli tools.
This was also going to be my comment, homebrew for cli tools and casks for some gui apps, all other environments in docker containers.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#94I switched to Macports back in my Mac days, used it as my daily driver for about 18 months before moving to Linux.
Macports has this appearance of being 'dated', and not the cool kid compared to Homebrew. But it doesn't have an opinion on what version of software you can install. Want postgres 9.4? Go ahead and install it. Want some ancient version of some other library? That's fine.
Dealing with custom port files and repositories isn't quite as easy, I suppose, but that's not really much different to setting up a debian repo in that it's a use case you won't encounter nearly as often as just installing stuff.
I also used nixpkgs at one point, many moons ago. That was also nice but not the most practical on a Macbook with 128GB storage, when you also have Docker, npm/ruby dependencies, and your native Mac software in the mix.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#95A 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.
Homebrew staff have rejected the concept of automatic upgrades for security, stability, and semver: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/3428
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#96I switched to MacPorts and never looked back, about two years ago. So far a much better experience than Homebrew.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#97The fact that homebrew is awful is one of the huge reasons I don’t use MacOS for development like all my co-workers. Instead I use Windows with WSL because the company won’t allow me a Linux laptop. If I had to use a Mac my solutions would be to alway use Docker, a virtual machine, or a remote dev environment of some kind.
I don't even bother with WSL anymore, most dev packages I use comes as prebuilt Windows binaries bundled as zip-packages that you can unzip anywhere and run. No dependency management, no magic updates, no PPAs, run how many versions of the same software you like, delete folder when don't need it anymore. Super easy.
Granted I don't work much with compiled languages anymore so I don't need to setup some complicated tool chain, but when I need to do that I usually go for MSYS2 or WSL when it has to be Linux.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#98I've been using MacPorts for over a decade now, and I'm very happy with it. I certainly much prefer its default choice of install prefixes (/usr/local should be reserved for things I install manually; /opt/local doesn't clash with anything else I'm aware of).
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#99The fact that homebrew is awful is one of the huge reasons I don’t use MacOS for development like all my co-workers. Instead I use Windows with WSL because the company won’t allow me a Linux laptop. If I had to use a Mac my solutions would be to alway use Docker, a virtual machine, or a remote dev environment of some kind.
Can't tell if trolling, but either way, this is hilarious. Almost better than the OP, who's looking to switch the best (i.e. easiest to use) package manager on macos because of one fuckup which was 90% his fault (a) there's a cli flag you can disable auto upgrades with and b) who tf installs and runs postgres natively, what are you, from 1995?)
I mean, using Linux through Windows because you don't like homebrew? What the fuck dude.
I have no clue how you people stay productive, because if a package manager gets your panties in such a twist, I can't even imagine what your opinions on text editors would be, not to mention actual code & system design.
Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?
#100It’s a strategy. Package managers have to choose a strategy: slow, crusty and stable or bleeding edge? It’s not CentOS… it’s a local dev machine. The same scenario will occur on Arch Linux.
Fortunately Homebrew has lots of helper scripts to upgrade DB’s like Postgres. You probably saw some scroll back with a command to upgrade from 12 to 13 or 13-14 etc. It will even download and install an old version in order to upgrade safely.
I understand the frustration but what is the alternative? Pinning every dependency? The reason so many of your packages were updated was likely because a core dependency was upgraded like OpenSSL.