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Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

nanobrew.trilok.ai

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Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#51

Post by nozzlegear »

halapro wrote: post #44
nozzlegear wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I'm confused about it. The nanobrew homepage says this: > nanobrew > The fastest macOS package manager. Written in Zig. > 3.5ms warm install time > 7,000x faster than Homebrew · faster than echo It presents itself as an alternative to Homebrew.

There are many such examples for npm as well: many "compatible" managers, one registry.

Sorry, examples of what? Package managers that present themselves as replacements for other package managers? Or package managers that aren't compatible with the registry they're supposed to be compatible with? Your use of scare quotes is confusing.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#52

Post by password4321 »

ryandrake wrote: post #24

What would be great is a Homebrew-compatible system that doesn't cut off support for older machines. I have a 3.8 GHz Quad core i5 iMac that still crushes, yet Homebrew has determined that I'm just too old and icky[1] to work with anymore. I had to move over to MacPorts, which is surprisingly nice, but I still miss brew. Yea, I know. It's open source. They can do what they want. Still sucks. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/S…

Yes MacPorts is the way. I switched after a new MacOS release meant mine was too old - brew update uninstalled a bunch of stuff I had been using then it stopped and let me know.

There's also https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher for the adventurous.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#53

Post by Alifatisk »

luizfelberti wrote: post #17

It might be good to explain how this differs from zerobrew [0], which is trying to accomplish the same thing [0] https://github.com/lucasgelfond/zerobrew

Zerobrew looks mature, I'll check it out.

Btw, I noted this:

> Zerobrew is experimental. We recommend running it alongside Homebrew rather than as a replacement, and do not recommend purging homebrew and replacing it with zerobrew unless you are absolutely sure about the implications of doing so.

So I guess its fine to run this alongside Homebrew and they don't conflict.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#54

Post by runjake »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #6

If it doesn’t ever execute Ruby: it cannot be compatible with Homebrew. “Compatible” is doing a bit of work here when it also means “implicitly relies on Homebrew’s CDN, CI, packaging infrastructure and maintainers who keep all this running”. There’s a new vibe coded Homebrew frontend with partial compatibility and improved speed every few weeks. Homebrew is working on an official Rust frontend that will actually hav…

Context for those unaware: the commenter, mikemcquaid, is the project lead for Homebrew.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#55

Post by password4321 »

drob518 wrote: post #7

This feels like a solution looking for a problem. I have a couple hundred brew packages on my system and I’ve never sat there thinking “If this was only 2 seconds faster…” while doing an update. I’m sure the Homebrew folks could mine this for a few ideas of how to further optimize brew, but I don’t think I’ll be adopting it anytime soon. Compatibility is more important than speed in this case.

See also: asdf and mise

https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf/issues/290#issuecomment-2365...

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#56

Post by maxkfranz »

ryandrake wrote: post #24

What would be great is a Homebrew-compatible system that doesn't cut off support for older machines. I have a 3.8 GHz Quad core i5 iMac that still crushes, yet Homebrew has determined that I'm just too old and icky[1] to work with anymore. I had to move over to MacPorts, which is surprisingly nice, but I still miss brew. Yea, I know. It's open source. They can do what they want. Still sucks. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/S…

You could use the OpenCode legacy patcher to upgrade to v15/Sequoia: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#57

Post by Xunjin »

runjake wrote: post #54
mikemcquaid wrote: post #6

If it doesn’t ever execute Ruby: it cannot be compatible with Homebrew. “Compatible” is doing a bit of work here when it also means “implicitly relies on Homebrew’s CDN, CI, packaging infrastructure and maintainers who keep all this running”. There’s a new vibe coded Homebrew frontend with partial compatibility and improved speed every few weeks. Homebrew is working on an official Rust frontend that will actually hav…

Context for those unaware: the commenter, mikemcquaid, is the project lead for Homebrew.

Thank you, his arguments totally makes sense, only the part that makes me icky is:

> There’s a new vibe coded Homebrew frontend with partial compatibility and improved speed every few weeks.

People are free and probably do this because it is slow. Alternatives often are not a bad thing.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#59

Post by ryandrake »

maxkfranz wrote: post #56
ryandrake wrote: post #24

What would be great is a Homebrew-compatible system that doesn't cut off support for older machines. I have a 3.8 GHz Quad core i5 iMac that still crushes, yet Homebrew has determined that I'm just too old and icky[1] to work with anymore. I had to move over to MacPorts, which is surprisingly nice, but I still miss brew. Yea, I know. It's open source. They can do what they want. Still sucks. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/S…

You could use the OpenCode legacy patcher to upgrade to v15/Sequoia: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

Sure, but this might win you a couple of years max. Homebrew's "Support Tiers" page, which I linked, also addresses OCLP users, going so far as to specify a minimum Intel architecture. So, even if you use OCLP to allow support for newer OS versions, eventually your CPU architecture will be too old and you're back in Tier 3.

Also, the writing is on the wall: Ultimately, Homebrew will be ARM-only, once Apple's legacy support becomes ARM-only. At which point it's game-over for Intel Macs.

Homebrew solves the "availability of software" problem in the Mac ecosystem, but it does not solve the "Need to stay on the new hardware treadmill" problem.

Re: Nanobrew: The fastest macOS package manager compatible with brew

#60

Post by gabagool »

happyopossum wrote: post #50
ryandrake wrote: post #24

What would be great is a Homebrew-compatible system that doesn't cut off support for older machines. I have a 3.8 GHz Quad core i5 iMac that still crushes, yet Homebrew has determined that I'm just too old and icky[1] to work with anymore. I had to move over to MacPorts, which is surprisingly nice, but I still miss brew. Yea, I know. It's open source. They can do what they want. Still sucks. 1: https://docs.brew.sh/S…

To be fair, Apple stopped providing security fixes for Mojave ~4+ years ago, and there have been 7 or 8 new os releases since then… I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an open source project to support everything

I agree in principle but Homebrew only supports the latest 3 versions of macOS. Right now Ventura 13 which came out in October 2022 is unsupported.
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