HomeBrew Analytics – top 1000 packages installed over last year • Hacker News Board

Homebrew's use of analytics still bothers me; specifically, making data public like this. It was supposed to only be used for development efforts, not showing off top-1000 lists. Also, I guess this following statement is - taking the charitable option - out of date.

> Homebrew's analytics are accessible to Homebrew's current maintainers.

https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics....

Yeah, I know, my tinfoil hat is quite elaborate.

EDIT: Like I said, my tinfoil hat is quite elaborate; I already have analytics and automated updating turned off. I like to retain some control over what information is reported back to Google or other projects.

That doesn't somehow boost my confidence in Google and volunteer-run open source projects to properly respect the privacy of their users.

Re: HomeBrew Analytics – top 1000 packages installed over last year

#7

Post by ianai » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 12:28 AM UTC

evantahler wrote: post #2

MySQL. Still more popular than Postgres.

With both numbering in the 6 figures and differing by ~50k it's not like they're vying for a lot of market share.

Re: HomeBrew Analytics – top 1000 packages installed over last year

#8

Post by arkadiyt » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 12:30 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #6

Homebrew's use of analytics still bothers me; specifically, making data public like this. It was supposed to only be used for development efforts, not showing off top-1000 lists. Also, I guess this following statement is - taking the charitable option - out of date. > Homebrew's analytics are accessible to Homebrew's current maintainers. https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.... Yeah, I know, my…

Reminder, you can opt out of this with:

    brew analytics off

You can check the current status with:

    brew analytics

Re: HomeBrew Analytics – top 1000 packages installed over last year

#9

Post by teej » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 12:30 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #6

Homebrew's use of analytics still bothers me; specifically, making data public like this. It was supposed to only be used for development efforts, not showing off top-1000 lists. Also, I guess this following statement is - taking the charitable option - out of date. > Homebrew's analytics are accessible to Homebrew's current maintainers. https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.... Yeah, I know, my…

Let me lend you this handy piece of code, straight from my production codebase, written the day this feature was released.

    # disable homebrew from tracking metrics
    # see https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Analytics.md
    HOMEBREW_NO_ANALYTICS=1

Re: HomeBrew Analytics – top 1000 packages installed over last year

#10

Post by jcrben » Mon, Sep 04, 2017, 12:41 AM UTC

evantahler wrote: post #2

MySQL. Still more popular than Postgres.

People should install stuff like their db with docker or vagrant anyhow. It'd be annoying to keep your app's db version in sync with the homebrew package.