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Homebrew 3.0

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Re: Homebrew 3.0

#371

Post by sirn »

soraminazuki wrote: post #362
sirn wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Nixpkg doesn't check buildability on Darwin when merging PRs, so things can break quite often on the nixpkgs-unstable channel (compared to nixpkgs-unstable on Linux). It's not hard to rollback, though, but it does makes me never want to ever run `nix-channel --update`.

nixpkgs CI does check for buildability on Darwin, which can be confirmed by looking at any of their PRs. However, packages do tend to be get marked as broken on Darwin if it doesn’t build and the packager doesn’t own a Mac. I feel things have stabilized significantly in recent days, though. I haven’t had a single Darwin breakage on the unstable channel since the release of 20.09. Perhaps the Zero Hydra Failures effor…

I think what I meant was darwin failure doesn't block.

Recently I had nomad breakage on -unstable caused by nvml support, which pulls in nvidia_x11, which pulls in linux_5_4, which of course not installable on darwin[1]. The maintainer fixed it very quickly (thank you!) but I still need to wait few more days for it to be included in -unstable.

[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/108603

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#372

Post by MagerValp »

curun1r wrote: post #358
talentedcoin wrote: post #201

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that Homebrew forced people use Ruby to write formulas (ie packages), whereas MacPorts forced people to use Tcl. This one decision, plus hosting formulas on Github, was a major contributor to their present success. As much as I sympathize (deeply) with all the criticism of Homebrew here on this thread -- I used to use MacPorts religiously and love it -- I don't think Homebre…

I find it unfortunate that those two occupy the 1-2 in Mac packaging options. It never really got much attention, but I've always liked Rudix [0] better. The package selection is much worse and not really kept as up-to-date, but the installation mechanism is far superior to Homebrew and MacPorts (and even Fink). It uses actual packages (the kind that Installer.app understands) so it integrates much more cleanly with…

Can't upvote enough. Rudix is the only package manager that really meshes with the platform, instead of trying to create its own weird linux (or bsd) hybrid ecosystem. I used it heavily a decade ago, but sadly it never really took off.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#373

Post by mercer »

busterarm wrote: post #327
panopticon wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this critique. Is this a complaint about package managers in general, or is `brew install git` lowering the bar from `apt install git`?

It's about a trend of developers who don't know how to interact with their system beyond `brew X Y` and the disconnect between the software on their Mac and the software on a production system. There's a huge disconnect between A & B so much so that it's created an entire role for people like me that otherwise shouldn't exist. I've been in the industry long enough to see a decline in ability for lots of developers be…

Your complaints seem to boil down to "get off my lawn" and it's rather tedious. what do you get out of it other than a feeling of superiority?

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#374

Post by mercer »

busterarm wrote: post #368
panopticon wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy the premise that package managers are the reason why companies need DevOps. Software deployment has gotten complicated for a variety of reasons (containerization, micro-services, continuous integration, cargo-culting FAANG practices, etc). When I first started my career, I FTP'd my code changes into the single production server that ran both Apache and MySQL. Homebrew is not the reason I don't do that any…

That's not really the argument that I'm making. I am a deployment engineer. Deployment is actually really easy. I'd argue that it's not far off from FTPing your code changes over in terms of difficulty. No, my argument is that more engineers today do not know how computers work. I'd even argue that many engineers would find FTPing over code changes to be too difficult (or they'd screw it up). My argument is that home…

Do you know how to directly 'talk' to the CPU or GPU? Do you build everything from source? Are you comfortable writing assembly? Have you recently soldered shit or built a PC from scratch?

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#375

Post by soraminazuki »

one-punch wrote: post #289
cwxm wrote: post #3

I can’t even begin to imagine how much value Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) has added to the world. It’s the recommended package manager at every place I’ve worked at and saves so much headache. I use Linux at home and package managers like AUR are great, but macOS is where the users are.

I use nixpkgs and home-manager for a consistent package management and configuration across MacOS and Linux (NixOS), which others also reported great success [1]. As noted in the article [1], home-manager has a steeper learning curve, but is much more powerful (e.g., supports providing development dependencies and environment, or even extend to Ops). For the interested, search for some variants of “homebrew home-mana…

I started using Home Manager long after I adopted Nix. I must say, I should’ve used it far more earlier on. With the power of the Nix language, Home Manager gives me so much more control and customizability over packages that just can’t be provided with traditional package managers.

While it takes some learning to leverage the full capability of Home manager, it’s also easy to get started. People new to Nix can start out with a basic configuration specifying a list of packages to install and then gradually move to a more capable configuration as they learn more.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#376

Post by joseph »

ihuman wrote: post #315
rswail wrote: post #119

The majority of the ports and software I want installed are essentially Unix/Linux/GNU environment tools. Macports has always seemed to me to be a more "unix-y" way of doing that, and it works politely with Apple's ways on top of the Unix core (eg locking down the system volume). It also has a very nice "select" and "variants" system that allows you to have multiple versions of a package as well as packages with more…

Why is it bad that homebrew puts files in /usr/local? Edit: They use /opt if you're on Apple Silicon https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/docs/Installati...

There's nothing wrong with installing packages into /usr/local, but brew turns /usr/local into a git repository and IMO that is wrong. Also, brew acts like it's made for a single user, as it changes files and directories to be owned by the user running it, but /usr/local is a system directory. When I install brew, I always put it into my home directory instead of /usr/local.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#377

Post by todd8 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #346
sirn wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those were one of the reasons, but I believe the biggest reason was MacPorts didn't install from binary archive and requires building everything from source in its early days (in the old BSD port tradition). Binary archives were added to MacPorts in 2011 with MacPorts 2.0, but a lot of people (me included) has already moved to Homebrew, leaving MacPorts with an impression of old, slow, and make your Mac fry an egg. M…

The other downside to MacPorts' original way of building everything is that sometimes, for whatever reason, things just wouldn't build and getting help with that was thorny, particularly for those who'd just started dabbling in software development or CLI usage. Where a vet or moderately seasoned user might find the thrown error actionable, the new user would google the error, find a couple of semi-related but ultima…

Just today my new config for Emacs refused to build libgit. I could see the CMake error, but rather than figuring out how to fix it I just commented out that part of my config (resulting in slightly more overhead in magic). Even with many years of serious software development, I really don't like debugging build problems.

I used to use Fink and MacPorts for MacOS package management, but brew was so easy to use that it won me over.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#378

Post by warent »

Not to be the eternally dissatisfied user, but I've never gotten homebrew to work properly on a machine with multiple users. It only works for 1 user at a time, even if it's owned by a user group that both users belong to.

Has anyone else had that problem or found a solution?

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#379

Post by curun1r »

martpie wrote: post #131
peteretep wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrarian view here: brew fucking sucks. It’s the worst package manager I’ve used for doing random unwanted updates at odd times. Someone else would have filled the void if homebrew hadn’t shown up, and it would hopefully have been better. I hate that brew is good enough that it’s got some kind of local maximum such that there’s no replacement forthcoming. There, I said it.

The usual non-productive rant. What prevents you to do it better then? What prevent you from forking it? Sharing improvement ideas? Contributing to the project? "It sucks" doesn't help anyone understand your frustrations and does not serve the message you're trying to share (let this one be valid or not). Also, as everything that is open-source/free: if you hate it, don't use it, that's it. And let the people who app…

> What prevents you to do it better then?

The mindshare of nearly the entire community that develops software for the Mac. Homebrew, the tool, is inferior to several other options, but developers of software treat it as the one true package manager on Mac. It's so frustrating to see projects offer it as the only supported way to install their software on Mac apart from building it from source.

Your question reads like "What prevents you from building a better social network than Facebook?" response to criticisms of that platform. And the answer is that in a tool like Facebook or Homebrew, all the value is in the ecosystem. Building a better tool is useless until everyone is using it. And no one will use it until everyone else is using it. It's a classic network effect, and it inhibits viable competition.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#380

Post by m463 »

cwxm wrote: post #3

I can’t even begin to imagine how much value Max Howell (creator of Homebrew) has added to the world. It’s the recommended package manager at every place I’ve worked at and saves so much headache. I use Linux at home and package managers like AUR are great, but macOS is where the users are.

I would say he's stuck in the shitty interface between truly creative people and macos.

I think creative people are getting the shaft from apple.

"Here's to the crazy ones" went out the window, maybe with the end of the Steve era. If you don't do it the apple way, apple doesn't care.

I mean, they support the xcode factory workers with apple languages. It's the apple equivalent of visual studio. But its sort of monochrome (like the 1984 ad)

I truly believe apple itself should have more direct/overt support for other software on their platform in a macports/homebrew way. (scripting languages?)

xquartz is sort of an example of this "forgotten lawn furniture left out in the rain". It's critical to a lot of mac users, but they distance themselves from it. Gah, at least bring it indoors when there's snow on the ground.

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