Homebrew: The macOS package manager Apple should have included from the beginning.
Thanks for stepping up.
Homebrew 1.1.0
151–160 of 216 posts
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Macports. It works and does what I need it to do. I switched to Mac from Linux, and with that background it was unnerving to see a system deliberately written to install non-root-owned files in /usr, so I ruled Homebrew out. I've always found it puzzling that people ask whether anyone "still" uses Macports, as though it is some decrepit thing. Homebrew is the one that seems strange to me.
My thoughts exactly. I'm a daily linux user, but occasionally some job requires me to use a Mac. Every time I see some OSX tool that starts with the premise of "just go ahead and `sudo chown` a system location and then curl this script into a `sudo bash` pipe" I just think to myself, if they care so little about security to not get the easy stuff right, can I really expect them to nail the hard stuff? Usually not. I'…
I switched to MacPorts from Fink (RIP). It feels about the same as using pkg on a modern FreeBSD box. Pros compared to Homebrew: doesn't litter symlinks everywhere, behaves the way you expect a package manager to. Cons: Not as cool™, tends to have less frequently updated packages.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#153I have very mixed feelings about homebrew. When it works, it is awesome, but when it doesn't it can be a serious nightmare. In particular, homebrew refuses to run under sudo. Instead, to instal in /usr/local it wants me to recursively chown /usr/local to myself, which is a Really Bad Idea (tm). I have mostly stopped using it for this reason. I understand that running a program that runs third-party scripts under sudo…
I have the same concerns and have been using Nix for my Mac package manager [1] instead. Functionally it's far better, though with far fewer packages available currently. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11772686
>Functionally it's far better
For example?
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't require you to take ownership of any directories that already exist when macOS is installed (i.e. `/usr/local` subdirectories but not `/usr/local` itself). Regardless of whether we should have picked another path, changing now would require rebuilding all our binary packages and that's a lot of effort with little return and almost certain breakages.
I haven't done a clean install of OS X in a long time, but I'm pretty sure /usr/local/bin exists. But even if it doesn't I don't find this a compelling argument. Having /usr/local/bin owned by root is a universally accepted standard in the unix world, and with very good reason: having /usr/local/bin owned by a user introduces security risks.
What are those risks?
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#155Of all package managers I use, homebrew is without a doubt the most satisfying. It tracks updates closely and has always had any package I was looking for, yet I don't remember the last time I ran into an error. (I'm sure all three happen, but if I can't find them with close to 200 packages installed, they must be doing something right)
Despite the warnings from their team, as soon as I switched to /opt/homebrew all of my homebrew problems went away.
The biggest issue by far are the number of traditional packages that install in /usr/local with root privileges, thereby clobbering homebrew and making "brew doctor" freak out.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#156Switch from Ruby to LuaJIT! I'd wager this is the best package manager out there if not for the slowness of Ruby's VM.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#157Just a quick poll. Is anybody still using MacPorts or anything else? If so, why?
Here is one more reason I use MacPorts, because it never does crap like this: $ brew search x11 x11vnc Error: GitHub API Error: API rate limit exceeded for 0.0.0.0. (But here's the good n ews: Authenticated requests get a higher rate limit. Check out the documentation for more details.) Try again in 54 minutes 49 seconds, or create a personal access token: https://github.com/settings/tokens and then set it as HOMEBRE…
This is not a Homebrew issue. This is a Github issue. The instructions regarding the API token solve the problem.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#158Without Homebrew, MacOS would be a lot less a fit as a development machine for me. Thanks to the authors.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#159Just a quick poll. Is anybody still using MacPorts or anything else? If so, why?
I do. I don't have anything against brew, I think it is great that it is available, but I've used Macports since before brew existed. Macports' philosophy and where it puts things just seems to jive more with how I think that type of tool should work and behave. There also might be a little bit of unjustifiable anti-ruby bias on my part at work there too. I'm glad both alternatives exist.
Re: Homebrew 1.1.0
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't done a clean install of OS X in a long time, but I'm pretty sure /usr/local/bin exists. But even if it doesn't I don't find this a compelling argument. Having /usr/local/bin owned by root is a universally accepted standard in the unix world, and with very good reason: having /usr/local/bin owned by a user introduces security risks.
What are those risks?
/usr/local/bin is a global resource. It is generally full of binaries that get run by many different users including root. If a regular user can replace those binaries the result is a privilege escalation.