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Homebrew Is Awesome

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Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#11

Post by bartvk »

wellthisisgreat wrote: post #8
mikemcquaid wrote: post #5

As someone who has been working on Homebrew for 14 years: it’s nice to see something positive about Homebrew on the front-page for a change. Homebrew is far from perfect or the best package manager but it is still surprising to me how much the Hacker News crowd likes to hate on something so ubiquitous with no meaningful corporate backing run by volunteers mostly in their spare time.

Homebrew is among the top-3 reasons I enjoy developing on Mac. Thanks a lot for your work!

What's great is that it can completely remove software from macOS.

For instance, Google Chrome litters the filesystem and is not easy to clean up manually. Homebrew however can remove all traces by passing the --zap option:

    brew uninstall --zap google-chrome
You can view the formula as follows:

    brew info --github google-chrome
Look for the zap stanza, there's a whole list of folders.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#12

Post by happymellon »

jez wrote: post #4
happymellon wrote: post #3

Does homebrew still want you to chown system folders?

No, the default Homebrew install location moved to /opt/homebrew on new Apple Silicon Macs. (I don’t know why Intel Macs still use /usr/local.) In any case, it’s possible to choose a custom installation location, even on Intel Macs if you prefer. https://docs.brew.sh/Installation Further discussion on the decision: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/9177

> you shouldn’t install outside the default, supported, best prefix

So you can, but apparently you shouldn't.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#13

Post by Macha »

happymellon wrote: post #12
jez wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the default Homebrew install location moved to /opt/homebrew on new Apple Silicon Macs. (I don’t know why Intel Macs still use /usr/local.) In any case, it’s possible to choose a custom installation location, even on Intel Macs if you prefer. https://docs.brew.sh/Installation Further discussion on the decision: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/9177

> you shouldn’t install outside the default, supported, best prefix So you can, but apparently you shouldn't.

The problem is binary artifacts of compiled software. Those native binaries have hardcoded paths to dependencies and so by changing the location, you're forcing homebrew to compile everything locally to use a different path. It's the same reason Nix is still at /nix, despite the quirky installation requirements it forces on modern Macs with SIP.

There are tools to rewrite links in binaries, but they only work until you get a program calling dlopen or equivalent

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#14

Post by BigJ1211 »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #5

As someone who has been working on Homebrew for 14 years: it’s nice to see something positive about Homebrew on the front-page for a change. Homebrew is far from perfect or the best package manager but it is still surprising to me how much the Hacker News crowd likes to hate on something so ubiquitous with no meaningful corporate backing run by volunteers mostly in their spare time.

I've seen the overal negative sentiment as well. As someone who's been using homebrew since I think 2012, I've enjoyed using it a lot with only some rare issues. So overal it's been a great experience.

I've never done a dive into package managers and just used what's been available. So even though homebrew is slower than other package managers, it has also rarely thrown me for a loop.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#15

Post by mort96 »

pjmlp wrote: post #10
mikemcquaid wrote: post #5

As someone who has been working on Homebrew for 14 years: it’s nice to see something positive about Homebrew on the front-page for a change. Homebrew is far from perfect or the best package manager but it is still surprising to me how much the Hacker News crowd likes to hate on something so ubiquitous with no meaningful corporate backing run by volunteers mostly in their spare time.

I don't care Homebrew exists, except when I am forced to use it in some corporate laptops. I am perfectly fine with macOS's UNIX™, out of the box experience.

What do you do when you need some library or command-line tool? Do you prefer to git clone and manually build from source? How do you keep up to date?

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#16

Post by mort96 »

jez wrote: post #4
happymellon wrote: post #3

Does homebrew still want you to chown system folders?

No, the default Homebrew install location moved to /opt/homebrew on new Apple Silicon Macs. (I don’t know why Intel Macs still use /usr/local.) In any case, it’s possible to choose a custom installation location, even on Intel Macs if you prefer. https://docs.brew.sh/Installation Further discussion on the decision: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/9177

/opt/homebrew isn't a folder provided by the operating the system, but it's still a "system folder" as in not a user folder. That's messed up. I have to imagine that this causes no end of issues on multi-user machines. The homebrew folder should either be somewhere under ~, or owned by root or some other system account.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#17

Post by happymellon »

Macha wrote: post #13
happymellon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you shouldn’t install outside the default, supported, best prefix So you can, but apparently you shouldn't.

The problem is binary artifacts of compiled software. Those native binaries have hardcoded paths to dependencies and so by changing the location, you're forcing homebrew to compile everything locally to use a different path. It's the same reason Nix is still at /nix, despite the quirky installation requirements it forces on modern Macs with SIP. There are tools to rewrite links in binaries, but they only work until y…

I was simply responding to the statement

> its possible to choose a custom installation location, even on Intel Macs if you prefer.

Whilst it is physically possible, it won't work.

What would be better is a plan. Putting it in a different system folder like `opt` isn't much better.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#18

Post by rickette »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #5

As someone who has been working on Homebrew for 14 years: it’s nice to see something positive about Homebrew on the front-page for a change. Homebrew is far from perfect or the best package manager but it is still surprising to me how much the Hacker News crowd likes to hate on something so ubiquitous with no meaningful corporate backing run by volunteers mostly in their spare time.

Thanks for your work, it's a great package manager!

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#19

Post by mikemcquaid »

pjmlp wrote: post #10
mikemcquaid wrote: post #5

As someone who has been working on Homebrew for 14 years: it’s nice to see something positive about Homebrew on the front-page for a change. Homebrew is far from perfect or the best package manager but it is still surprising to me how much the Hacker News crowd likes to hate on something so ubiquitous with no meaningful corporate backing run by volunteers mostly in their spare time.

I don't care Homebrew exists, except when I am forced to use it in some corporate laptops. I am perfectly fine with macOS's UNIX™, out of the box experience.

I'm glad that you're able to meet your needs without Homebrew.

This is what I was talking about about HN sentiment, though: for some reason you "don't care" enough to click through to the comments on a "Homebrew is Awesome" post and feel the need to tell everyone that you don't care. That's a different experience of "don't care" than I have and I find it intriguing.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#20

Post by rickette »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #9
mikemcquaid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/usr/local/bin still wants chowned on Intel Macs but we’re looking at ways of being more liberal there too.

Nice. What about the default telemetry?

It's still opt-out, but they moved from Google Analytics to their own self-hosted InfluxDB for increased privacy.
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