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Honest question. Homebrew is the missing package manager for OS X. Linux has package managers, so why a fork? Packages just available through homebrew?
I personally have always hoped for a unified package manager across distros.
Honest question. Homebrew is the missing package manager for OS X. Linux has package managers, so why a fork? Packages just available through homebrew?
Finally! It looks like a lot of commenters here are confused, but there are a lot of situations where the default package Linux package managers don't cut it. After getting used to the (update) speed, flexibility, and reliability of Homebrew, it's shocking and frustrating to go back to Linux, where package managers were born, and have to settle for a less robust ecosystem.
Homebrew was created to add the package manager experience of Linux to Mac OS X, so what gap does this fill? Mac users already experience issues relating to having multiple non-default package managers (i.e. Homebrew and MacPorts) - what conflicts will having a default and non-default package manager arise? The problem it is trying to solve would be better approached hosting Debian, RHEL etc repositories which mirror…
Up to date versions of packages.
Some packages conflict in the repos e.g. ffmpeg and libav on Debian derivatives and keeping both is annoying.
I would rather something like Nix or Guix over this (and as you say standardisation between package managers would be massive).
In short linux package management is great but it could be so much better and this might be a kick in the right direction?
Now, I see that people are saying that it fills a niche of having the latest and greatest builds of things. Other GNU/Linux distros already have similar things. Arch Linux's core repo is quite fresh and there's also the AUR for bleeding edge stuff. Debian testing isn't as fresh, but it has most new software fairly quickly. I don't know much about Gentoo, but it's overlay system gives users easy access to custom repos with bleeding edge software. Hell, even Ubuntu seems to have PPA for everything if the software in the release isn't new enough. Then there's some less known options like Nix and GNU Guix that provide very up-to-date packages and have far more features than Homebrew.
In short, we need better system package managers for our distros, not additional package managers to slap on top of the distro we use.
Homebrew was created to add the package manager experience of Linux to Mac OS X, so what gap does this fill? Mac users already experience issues relating to having multiple non-default package managers (i.e. Homebrew and MacPorts) - what conflicts will having a default and non-default package manager arise? The problem it is trying to solve would be better approached hosting Debian, RHEL etc repositories which mirror…
> The problem it is trying to solve would be better approached hosting Debian, RHEL etc repositories which mirror each other in their structure. I disagree, and I think Linuxbrew fills a different niche. When you install something from your distro's package manager, you are actually installing another program that happens to come with the operating system. This has two implications: - It's usually fixed at a particul…
OTOH if someone said RPM spec format was archaic I'd certainly agree.
On the other hand, Homebrew packaging _maintenance_ is done by homebrew maintainers.
Sooner or later, when they achieve the thousands-of-packages mark, they'll need packaging guidelines, and then packaging rules, and then a packaging team (maybe with their own email domain [@debian ;)].
When (if) this happen to linuxbrew, you'll have another linux distribution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are much better package managers for that. Try Nix or GNU Guix.
Can I get one of these to manage packages installed to /home in Ubuntu?
Honest question. Homebrew is the missing package manager for OS X. Linux has package managers, so why a fork? Packages just available through homebrew?
That said, I don't think yet another package manager is necessarily the right solution unless linuxbrew can find dependencies installed by apt/yum so it's not a "one or the other" scenario.