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Homebrew 3.0

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Re: Homebrew 3.0

#441

Post by Hackbraten »

sneak wrote: post #429
0xCMP wrote: post #34

Brew is great. I’ve switched to using Nix as much as I could but most “Apps” aren’t supported yet where `brew install —cask` has it right away. Always nice to know Brew will always have the latest version around. The only problem with that ends up being that if you use brew for development dependencies like Node or Python you can’t manage multiple versions. Nix being the most powerful in this area.

I've switched to Nix and never looked back, thanks to Homebrew embedding spyware into the package manager. I keep my non-system apps in ~/Applications and back them up with the rest of my files.

> spyware

Please.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#442

Post by Wowfunhappy »

zzyzxd wrote: post #417
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…

It reminds me about this answer from Homebrew's creator, Max Howell, on Quora[1]: > I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested. It’s shit frankly. > Is it any surprise I couldn’t answer their heavily computer-science questions well? > On the other hand, my softwa…

As I see it, a major problem in software is that when you have a problem, it's often not clear who or what is at fault. Let's say my laptop is slow, particularly when I have lots of browser tabs open. Should I blame:

1. My hardware?

2. My OS?

3. My web browser?

4. My browser extensions?

5. Websites?

6. The chat app I keep open in the background?

7. The Electron settings app for my RGB Keyboard?

8. My internet connection?

9. A virus?

10. "Technology", presumably alongside some wistful thoughts of "the good old days"?

Most users, even non-technical ones, are going to blame one of these things. And, more often than not, their conclusions will have more to do with marketing and happenstance than the actual cause

All of which is to say, that quote kind of bothers me. You cannot actually be focused on user experience while skimping on technical details. You may have created an experience in which users feel inclined to blame someone else, but that's not the same thing. You are the knowledgable developer, and your users are not.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#443

Post by _rend »

warent wrote: post #378

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?

Along with Hackbraten's answer — I don't know if this would be more or less work for you but would a per-user Homebrew installation help? I don't have any multi-user machines but for years I've kept my Homebrew installation in ~/Homebrew, where I have complete ownership of it. (Really you can install Homebrew in any directory) Or would the space/compilation cost be prohibitive?

Not a Homebrew maintainer, just a satisfied user.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#444

Post by kergonath »

saurik wrote: post #188
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Someone else would have filled the void if homebrew hadn’t shown up, and it would hopefully have been better." MacPorts and fink existed before homebrew took over, and they weren't better. That's why homebrew took over.

Homebrew "took over" because of a combination of web 2.0 marketing that prematurely shat on its competitors while claiming it was the "modern and beautiful approach" while ignoring hard-learned lessons about the extents to which Apple doesn't care about breaking things and removing programs or libraries from their base system--the Homebrew people were really pissy about "MacPorts insists on installing its own version…

Thanks. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one remembering their arrogant attitude and approach to development, or with these concerns about technical details. It’s unfortunate that Macports became the boring one compared to Homebrew’s new hotness, because Macports is the better design, TCL port files notwithstanding.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#445

Post by saagarjha »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #442
zzyzxd wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me about this answer from Homebrew's creator, Max Howell, on Quora[1]: > I wrote a simple package manager. Anyone could write one. And in fact mine is pretty bad. It doesn't do dependency management properly. It doesn’t handle edge case behavior well. It isn’t well tested. It’s shit frankly. > Is it any surprise I couldn’t answer their heavily computer-science questions well? > On the other hand, my softwa…

As I see it, a major problem in software is that when you have a problem, it's often not clear who or what is at fault. Let's say my laptop is slow, particularly when I have lots of browser tabs open. Should I blame: 1. My hardware? 2. My OS? 3. My web browser? 4. My browser extensions? 5. Websites? 6. The chat app I keep open in the background? 7. The Electron settings app for my RGB Keyboard? 8. My internet connect…

Have you tried uninstalling Chrome? I hear it can make your WindowServer go wild :P

More seriously, though, this is why I hate people who use software like Electron and claim their users can't notice: of course they can, they just complain that their computer is slow because they can't pinpoint it on your app. As a developer who knows better, your entire charade depends on ignorant users being unable to point the blame at you for what you have done to them. Combine this with the lock-in typical of today where users are resigned to use your software even if they don't particularly want to and now the people who do know what you're doing can't do anything about it either.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#446

Post by saagarjha »

weaksauce wrote: post #385
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacPorts does also still drop to compiling from source more often than Homebrew. But that’s mostly because they take a more conservative legal approach towards the GPL—for instance, they won't distribute binaries of any GPL software that links with OpenSSL. Also, ports for older/ancient versions of OS X are frequently source-only, but since Homebrew doesn’t support such systems at all, it's not really a fair comparis…

> Also, ports for older/ancient versions of OS X are frequently source-only, but since Homebrew doesn’t support such systems at all, it's not really a fair point of comparison. On an old, unsupported, system homebrew drops down to compiling. just the other day it compiled for four hours just to update one program. kinda infuriating really since there are downloads for those packages still.

I'm surprised it still works, to be honest–Homebrew is usually fairly aggressive about dropping support for older systems.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#447

Post by Hackbraten »

_rend wrote: post #443
warent wrote: post #378

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?

Along with Hackbraten's answer — I don't know if this would be more or less work for you but would a per-user Homebrew installation help? I don't have any multi-user machines but for years I've kept my Homebrew installation in ~/Homebrew, where I have complete ownership of it. (Really you can install Homebrew in any directory) Or would the space/compilation cost be prohibitive? Not a Homebrew maintainer, just a satis…

On macOS, one major drawback is that if you use a non-standard installation directory for Homebrew, you can no longer install binary packages and everything is compiled from source.

If you can live with that, you should be fine though.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#448

Post by someonehere »

If anyone from Homebrew is lurking on here. Thank you. I’m working with my management team to send a donation your way. We’ve been using it for IT and Engineering deployment builds for years and it’s something we feel we owe as a sign of gratitude and to keep the project running.

Thank you again!

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#449

Post by saagarjha »

vetinari wrote: post #412
joseph wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It turns /usr/local/Homebrew into a git repository; not /usr/local itself. Whatever it links into /usr/local/{bin,include,lib,sbin,share} is just a symlink into /usr/local/Cellar.

It used to turn /usr/local into a Git repository, at least until that got locked down with SIP.

Re: Homebrew 3.0

#450

Post by Hackbraten »

saagarjha wrote: post #446
weaksauce wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, ports for older/ancient versions of OS X are frequently source-only, but since Homebrew doesn’t support such systems at all, it's not really a fair point of comparison. On an old, unsupported, system homebrew drops down to compiling. just the other day it compiled for four hours just to update one program. kinda infuriating really since there are downloads for those packages still.

I'm surprised it still works, to be honest–Homebrew is usually fairly aggressive about dropping support for older systems.

We don’t support any scenario where things are built from source (i. e. we won’t help you if things break) so technically support has indeed been dropped.
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