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Homebrew Is Awesome

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Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#21

Post by mikemcquaid »

mort96 wrote: post #16
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

/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.

Most macOS developer machines (our primary/biggest target audience) are not multi-user machines. It's not owned by root because Homebrew doesn't run as root (because the macOS sandbox doesn't run as root).

Nothing stopping you from having this owned by a system account, it's just not a path we recommend because it's not the best fit for most of our users.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#22

Post by mikemcquaid »

happymellon wrote: post #17
Macha wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It does work, it's just not supported because the experience is worse. Open source (Homebrew included) is full of lots of plans: it's lacking people willing and able to execute on those plans. When or if that happens: Homebrew will support installations in more locations.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#23

Post by mikemcquaid »

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?

The default telemetry is: - (still) not sent until we notify you that it's opt-out - moved (this year) from Google Analytics to our InfluxDB instance (destroying all existing GA data) - only kept for 365 days - contains no PII - no longer even attempts to identify individual users - necessary to be opt-in in order for us to be able to effectively run the project

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#24

Post by supriyo-biswas »

bartvk wrote: post #11
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s also AppCleaner for those looking for a GUI.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#26

Post by pjmlp »

mort96 wrote: post #15
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most of the stuff is already available as classical UNIX, then,

https://developer.apple.com/xcode/

https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads

https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi

https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download

https://code.visualstudio.com/

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/

And I am pretty much done.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#27

Post by pjmlp »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #19
pjmlp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Your comment was phrased in a way that looks like a question, hence the answer from my side.

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#28

Post by 50 »

BigJ1211 wrote: post #14
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.

> I've never done a dive into package managers and just used what's been available.

See the Nix Package Manager[1].

1. https://checkoway.net/musings/nix/

Re: Homebrew Is Awesome

#30

Post by mort96 »

pjmlp wrote: post #26
mort96 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Most of the stuff is already available as classical UNIX, then, https://developer.apple.com/xcode/ https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download https://code.visualstudio.com/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/mac/ And I am pretty much done.

Aha, so your solution is to just not do things which needs additional CLI tools or libraries. Got it.

That's not gonna work for me, or most people who use a package manager on macOS.

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