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I'm curious to know if there's a reason everyone installs Homebrew in /usr/local (other than it being the default installation path). I've always chosen to inst

by alex1 11y ago

I'm curious to know if there's a reason everyone installs Homebrew in /usr/local (other than it being the default installation path). I've always chosen to install it in ~/.homebrew and haven't had any problems. Everything I install with Homebrew seems to handle an alternative prefix without issue.

Tehnix 11y ago
Because it has never caused any trouble having it in /usr/local, and as another user said /usr/local/bin is part of the standard path. Other than this one-liner, which is done once, there really isn't any extra hassle with using the default. I'd be more interested in why you didn't want to install it there?
- rbinv 11y ago
  Actually it sounds like you will need to run this/restore permissions after every future OS X update.
  - Tehnix 11y ago
    Hmm, having been on El Capitan since the first beta, this hasn't happened. Do you have anywhere it states that?
    - rbinv 11y ago
      https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/El_Capitan_and_Homebrew.md#el-capitan--homebrew https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/h... "Apple documentation hints that /usr/local will be returned to root:wheel restricted permissions on every OS X update; Homebrew will be adding a brew doctor check to warn you when this happens in the near future."
      - crazysim 11y ago
        Perhaps they should consider adding an option to install something into launchd that just does this.
  - _jsn 11y ago
    Right. The OS X image now has to contain a /usr/local directory so that it exists unrestricted after you install the OS (otherwise you would be unable to create it yourself, because /usr is restricted). It has to ship with some permissions, so it rightly ships owned by root. The installer will apply these permissions each time it runs. Aside: I really wish Homebrew didn't encourage having a single user own /usr/local. If they're going to insist on never needing sudo to install things, it should just default to installing in your home directory.
- alex1 11y ago
  Mostly because of my (perhaps irrational) OCD in not wanting to touch global system paths or files, even though under FHS /usr/local is where you're supposed to install manually-managed libraries and binaries. I believe Homebrew likes to have its path owned by you instead of root, so I think it makes more sense to have stuff that's going to be owned by me to be in my home folder rather than /usr/local.
- __david__ 11y ago
  I installed mine in /usr/local/brew because I already had a ton of stuff in /usr/local managed with GNU stow before brew even existed. I don't have any problems with it. Someone I know puts it in ~/brew and that works just fine, too. His reasoning is that /usr/local/ is for all users, and though he's really the only user on his laptop, it's just wrong to install a bunch of stuff that's just for him into a global user directory.
favadi 11y ago
For me, because it is the default, and there is section in homebrew FAQ tell that many build scripts breaks if it isn't in `/usr/local/`.
eloisant 11y ago
That's a common Unix practice to put system-wide stuff manually managed (as opposed to managed by the OS/distribution) in /usr/local.
- alex1 11y ago
  Yep, I agree and that's where I install stuff on everything other than OS X. One distinction though, I think, is that most of the stuff I install on OS X I don't want to be available system-wide. I'm (typically) not using Homebrew to install daemons that run all the time or things that serve critical system/network functions, so I've never seen a reason to make them available to the entire system. I agree that goes against the Unix way but I started preferring this way of using Homebrew after I had similar problems upgrading and even updating OS X. Also, what if for some reason a single machine is shared by two people and they need different versions of some programs installed with Homebrew? Installing everything in /usr/local isn't going to look like a good idea then.
  - Camillo 11y ago
    It's not going to look like a good idea even if they need the same version. You're not supposed to run homebrew as root; it runs as your own user instead. If two users try to install things with homebrew in the same directory, you're going to end up with some things owned by one user and some things owned by the other, and things will start failing pretty soon. A while ago I floated the idea of having a separate, low-privilege "brew" user that installs things, with the brew command automatically switching to that user, but there was no interest.
- justincormack 11y ago
  Homebrew is not really "manually managed" though - I prefer just things I actually manually install in /usr/local
  - eyko 11y ago
    It is if by manually managed we mean _not managed by the system/OS, and not updated without user interaction_. If you update OSX and you had homebrew binaries in /usr/bin, they'd be gone. Homebrew also won't you that there are updates and never updates packages unless you decide to get a new version.
skrause 11y ago
brew supports pre-compiled binary packages (what they call bottles) only when you use the default install location /usr/local. If you use any other prefix brew will always compile all packages on your system, which might take a long time depending on the performance of your system. So using /usr/local saves time and energy since all brew needs to do is to download and install binary packages.
- __david__ 11y ago
  Actually, many bottles are marked as safe to install anywhere, so even if you don't use /usr/local you will still get a lot of things installed via bottles (but not everything).
tvon 11y ago
Homebrew is great, but using /usr/local as the default install location just a bad idea.
dingaling 11y ago
> in ~/.homebrew Not sure about OS X but common corporate Unix protocol is to make /home/ noexec. Non-core ( i.e. outside central package management ) installations go to /opt/

by alex1 11y ago

Tehnix 11y ago

Because it has never caused any trouble having it in /usr/local, and as another user said /usr/local/bin is part of the standard path. Other than this one-liner, which is done once, there really isn't any extra hassle with using the default. I'd be more interested in why you didn't want to install it there?

rbinv 11y ago
Actually it sounds like you will need to run this/restore permissions after every future OS X update.
- Tehnix 11y ago
  Hmm, having been on El Capitan since the first beta, this hasn't happened. Do you have anywhere it states that?
  - rbinv 11y ago
    https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/El_Capitan_and_Homebrew.md#el-capitan--homebrew https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/h... "Apple documentation hints that /usr/local will be returned to root:wheel restricted permissions on every OS X update; Homebrew will be adding a brew doctor check to warn you when this happens in the near future."
    - crazysim 11y ago
      Perhaps they should consider adding an option to install something into launchd that just does this.
- _jsn 11y ago
  Right. The OS X image now has to contain a /usr/local directory so that it exists unrestricted after you install the OS (otherwise you would be unable to create it yourself, because /usr is restricted). It has to ship with some permissions, so it rightly ships owned by root. The installer will apply these permissions each time it runs. Aside: I really wish Homebrew didn't encourage having a single user own /usr/local. If they're going to insist on never needing sudo to install things, it should just default to installing in your home directory.
alex1 11y ago
Mostly because of my (perhaps irrational) OCD in not wanting to touch global system paths or files, even though under FHS /usr/local is where you're supposed to install manually-managed libraries and binaries. I believe Homebrew likes to have its path owned by you instead of root, so I think it makes more sense to have stuff that's going to be owned by me to be in my home folder rather than /usr/local.
__david__ 11y ago
I installed mine in /usr/local/brew because I already had a ton of stuff in /usr/local managed with GNU stow before brew even existed. I don't have any problems with it. Someone I know puts it in ~/brew and that works just fine, too. His reasoning is that /usr/local/ is for all users, and though he's really the only user on his laptop, it's just wrong to install a bunch of stuff that's just for him into a global user directory.

favadi 11y ago

For me, because it is the default, and there is section in homebrew FAQ tell that many build scripts breaks if it isn't in `/usr/local/`.

eloisant 11y ago

That's a common Unix practice to put system-wide stuff manually managed (as opposed to managed by the OS/distribution) in /usr/local.

alex1 11y ago
Yep, I agree and that's where I install stuff on everything other than OS X. One distinction though, I think, is that most of the stuff I install on OS X I don't want to be available system-wide. I'm (typically) not using Homebrew to install daemons that run all the time or things that serve critical system/network functions, so I've never seen a reason to make them available to the entire system. I agree that goes against the Unix way but I started preferring this way of using Homebrew after I had similar problems upgrading and even updating OS X. Also, what if for some reason a single machine is shared by two people and they need different versions of some programs installed with Homebrew? Installing everything in /usr/local isn't going to look like a good idea then.
- Camillo 11y ago
  It's not going to look like a good idea even if they need the same version. You're not supposed to run homebrew as root; it runs as your own user instead. If two users try to install things with homebrew in the same directory, you're going to end up with some things owned by one user and some things owned by the other, and things will start failing pretty soon. A while ago I floated the idea of having a separate, low-privilege "brew" user that installs things, with the brew command automatically switching to that user, but there was no interest.
justincormack 11y ago
Homebrew is not really "manually managed" though - I prefer just things I actually manually install in /usr/local
- eyko 11y ago
  It is if by manually managed we mean _not managed by the system/OS, and not updated without user interaction_. If you update OSX and you had homebrew binaries in /usr/bin, they'd be gone. Homebrew also won't you that there are updates and never updates packages unless you decide to get a new version.

skrause 11y ago

brew supports pre-compiled binary packages (what they call bottles) only when you use the default install location /usr/local. If you use any other prefix brew will always compile all packages on your system, which might take a long time depending on the performance of your system. So using /usr/local saves time and energy since all brew needs to do is to download and install binary packages.

__david__ 11y ago
Actually, many bottles are marked as safe to install anywhere, so even if you don't use /usr/local you will still get a lot of things installed via bottles (but not everything).

tvon 11y ago

Homebrew is great, but using /usr/local as the default install location just a bad idea.

dingaling 11y ago

> in ~/.homebrew Not sure about OS X but common corporate Unix protocol is to make /home/ noexec. Non-core ( i.e. outside central package management ) installations go to /opt/