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Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

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Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#1
Yesterday I ran `brew install virtualenv` and homebrew decided to upgrade postgres, ruby, youtube-dl, vim, rust, wget and 50 other unrelated packages. The single command took 45min and broke all of my local postgres databases (and who knows what else).

At this point I should know better than to install postgres via homebrew, but unwanted/unasked-for upgrades is not a feature I'm looking for in a package manager.

What's your experience with other package managers for macOS? Currently looking into macports & nix and not sure which one to choose...

Re: Ask HN: Best Alternative to Homebrew in 2021?

#5
nix has a very steep learning curve, but I have been using it on macOS for a while now. Can’t recommend it enough. Even started using it on my personal PC, which allows me to use the same nix flake on both systems.

EDIT: Personal PC is running NixOS not Windows.

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