Our audit of Homebrew • Hacker News Board

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#51

Post by paholg » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 1:58 AM UTC

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #41

paholg wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've had to use a Mac, I've used nix to good success. I'm actually surprised how well it worked; I was able to basically just use the same config I use on Linux, removing just the few Linux-specific packages.

Do you not use many packages and only strictly use FOSS tooling? I have a large and growing list of packages that have to be managed in Homebrew still because the package is one of the following: 1. Not available at all in nixpkgs (e.g. Docker Desktop, BetterTouchTool, etc) 2. In nixpkgs, but completely broken or missing some architecture support (e.g. Firefox) 3. Actually available and somewhat functional in nixpkgs…

Huh, interesting. I did primarily use FOSS and CLI applications. It's been a couple years, so I don't remember what exactly I used it for. I probably installed Docker Desktop via whatever method docker recommends, and I'm not sure about Firefox.

For alacrity, I remember it being annoying to integrate into Mac's launcher, but it otherwise worked.

Pretty much everything else was programming-related and just worked.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#52

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:00 AM UTC

I ditched `brew` for `nix` a while back and while the TUI could be more end-user-friendly (to the point that I wrote a wrapper called "ixnay" just so I could do "ixnay install " as easily as with brew, https://github.com/pmarreck/ixnay), the overall guarantees make it worth it.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#53

Post by woodruffw » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:05 AM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #38

woodruffw wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. We use the TOB-$PRODUCT-$XXXX convention for our audit findings, where $PRODUCT is the target under audit and $XXXX is a unique incrementing counter for each finding. (As far as I know, a lot of audit firms do similar things.)

I cannot reply to your top comment for some reason, so asking here: What is your personal recommendation for Mac users? Would you suggest a different package manager and, if so, which?

Given that I did the audit, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to offer an endorsement (or a negative endorsement) in this context. What I’ll say is this: the findings on Homebrew were not inconsistent with what I’d expect to find on any similarly sized userspace package manager that serves its own binary builds.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#54

Post by blt » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:11 AM UTC

user3939382 wrote: post #21

I’m still good on MacPorts. Seems I’m alone these days. Works fine for me.

I got sick of Homebrew after a while and tried switching to MacPorts, but it feels like an endless uphill battle when so many packages only offer source and Homebrew distributions.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#55

Post by ggm » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:13 AM UTC

parhamn wrote: post #48

eduction wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Key difference is Mac ports keeps its tree separate in /opt. This means things take longer initially to install because it can’t just leverage system stuff already there. Upside is greater reliability because it doesn’t have to worry about a system update changing its dependencies. I prefer the greater reliability of macports.

> Key difference is Mac ports keeps its tree separate in /opt What do you mean by this? brew has been linking from /opt/homebrew for years now.

The person you're responding to may have been using homebrew on Intel. It's been in /opt on ARM since inception on ARM.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#56

Post by ggm » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:13 AM UTC

dmd wrote: post #47

ggm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most homebrew users started in macports, or fink. Very few I talk to (admittedly not many and curmugeons) want to go back.

That was probably true in homebrew’s first year. At this point I would be shocked if more than a fraction of a percent of homebrew users have ever even heard of macports or fink.

On reflection I think you are very probably right. I should have thought more about my origin story before posting.

Once, long ago...

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#57

Post by steve_adams_86 » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:14 AM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #49

brandall10 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know why Homebrew overtook MacPorts? I only have a vague recollection of a Rails colleague pushing me to switch circa 2013 or so and haven't given it much thought since, but it (MacPorts) seemed to be similarly ubiquitous prior.

MacPorts was slower (bringing in its own dependencies for everything meant longer build steps) and required sudo more. There were some annoying fiddly parts that made it seem like the homebrew users around you were having more fun exploring packages. It was also exciting how many packages and casks were in homebrew and it was easy to make your own. Also, back then there were lots of people experiencing package manage…

> Also, back then there were lots of people experiencing package managers for the first time and they took to homebrew easily.

I suppose it was almost 15 years ago now but this is what I recall. Homebrew was easier, snappier, and the general friction coefficient felt smaller.

It's a little funny reading this and then wonder... Why did I leave MacPorts behind? I don't think I put much thought into it at the time and rather went by feel. I was still somewhat new to this stuff having started my career more in design than development.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#58

Post by jrochkind1 » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:26 AM UTC

brandall10 wrote: post #44

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using MacPorts for as long as I've wanted a macOS package manager, and it's been working very well for me.

Anyone know why Homebrew overtook MacPorts? I only have a vague recollection of a Rails colleague pushing me to switch circa 2013 or so and haven't given it much thought since, but it (MacPorts) seemed to be similarly ubiquitous prior.

At the point I switched from MacPorts to Homebrew, homebrew just worked more reliably in my experience. It installed things quicker and with fewer build/install failures. i don't know enough about what was going on under the hood to have any theory as to why this was my experience; I don't want to know what's going on under the hood, I just want to type `install whatever`, and have it work.

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#59

Post by sizeofchar » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:54 AM UTC

brandall10 wrote: post #44

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using MacPorts for as long as I've wanted a macOS package manager, and it's been working very well for me.

Anyone know why Homebrew overtook MacPorts? I only have a vague recollection of a Rails colleague pushing me to switch circa 2013 or so and haven't given it much thought since, but it (MacPorts) seemed to be similarly ubiquitous prior.

When I started using a Mac in 2009, MacPorts, Fink (and I think there was another I can't recall the name) simply wouldn't work for me. They would take very long to build what I wanted, there weren't nearly as many packages as was in Debian/Ubuntu, and many were old versions. Worse, many build attempts would just fail.

In that scenario, brew worked like a charm. It was quick, had most or even more packages than Debian/Ubuntu and they were newer. Failure to install was rare.

Then, Apple started yearly release of OS X, and that both broke brew and my system hard, so I started investigating and found out about the many "shortcuts" that brew took and how it violated systems components. I was dismayed, and abandoned brew for good.

So, I stood a period where I would use many of my tools inside a Ubuntu VM, until probably 2013-2014, when for some reason I tried again MacPorts, and I don't know why, but that time it was much more reliable, and because of Apple's insane atm SSDs with 2 GB/s bandwidth, install became quick enough. Packages were still somewhat lagging behind in available versions, but the variety of them kinda reached the levels of what was in Debian/Ubuntu, so it was good enough for me.

Then, the killer feature, I found out about macports variants and selectors, which I find the most awesome thing to this date in package managers (I haven't tried nix, still, it might be magnitude better in that regard). No needing to use rvm, pyenv, custom installs of gcc messing with make/autotools, and the only sane way of compiling various Haskell projects (before haskell-stack).

Re: Our audit of Homebrew

#60

Post by jonhohle » Wed, Jul 31, 2024, 2:56 AM UTC

arprocter wrote: post #18

jmbwell wrote: post #10

With so many other package managers available, I often wish something else was the de facto package manager on macOS. Something like pkgsrc, which follows conventions much better and is thereby much easier to manage.

It'd be nice if brew was a little more apt-y, and all the beer nomenclature is a bit silly My first exposure to Mac package stuff was fink in the early aughts - compiling everything on a Pismo G3 was pretty slow going

Switch to MacPorts. It supports precompiled packages, doesn’t take over the world and force anything on you the same way Homebrew does.

I’m really disappointed in how Homebrew took a lot of attention away from the existing package managers, made a bunch of terrible decisions related to packaging and flexibility and genera Unix philosophy, and then ate the world.

: shakes fist at clouds, get off my lawn