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I really wish these release notes would explain what is going on for people who don't know the internals of homebrew. Especially since homebrew force-updates i

I really wish these release notes would explain what is going on for people who don't know the internals of homebrew. Especially since homebrew force-updates itself and there's no way for users to avoid these changes.[1] There are several updates in here that make me worry that this is somehow going to break my environment or otherwise bite me in the ass when I do something innocent like install Ghostscript and find that Emacs no longer works and to figure out how to fix it's going to be hours of reading github issues. Which is an experience I've had before, repeatedly. "brew update no longer migrates legacy keg symlinks, tap names, repository locations, cache locations or cache entries." Is this going to break something I installed years ago? Maybe the homebrew maintainers know, but average tool users don't. "Homebrew/homebrew-core requires all formulae to be open source by the OSI definition." Does this mean that something I used homebrew to install in a previous version will no longer be getting updates? Will things that depend on it still be getting updates? Does whether or not updates happen depend on some random committer's legalistic interpretation of an open source definition? Why exactly is this kind of purist decision being imposed on users? [in 2.0] "brew cleanup will be run periodically and for trigger individual formula cleanup on reinstall, install or upgrade. You can enable this behaviour now on 1.9.0 by setting the HOMEBREW_INSTALL_CLEANUP variable." So you're going to periodically make maintenance changes to my system without my permission. Goodie. Someone really needs to write a guide to migrating away from homebrew for people in the unfortunate situation of having used this tool for a long time, and find it taking more and more liberties with one's computer, but also having numerous essential packages now managed by it and not sure how to move to alternatives without weeks of breakage. [1] https://paultopia.github.io/posts-output/anti-homebrew/ https://paultopia.github.io/posts-output/anti-homebrew/

jxy 8y ago
Save your time and soul. Just use MacPorts.
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
> "brew update no longer migrates legacy keg symlinks, tap names, repository locations, cache locations or cache entries." The biggest thing that has kept me on MacPorts and away from Homebrew is that I don't understand half of the terms that they use. What is a keg? What is a tap? From the article you linked, what is a cask? What is the Caskroom? Elsewhere I've heard talk of "bottles" - what is a bottle, in this context? What are formulae?
- Hackbraten 8y ago
  When I started using Homebrew, I found those terms super intimidating and overly quirky but that went away quickly! Keg: a dedicated subdirectory for each installed package. Cellar: this is where the kegs are. Usually `/usr/local/Cellar`. Formula: a file that tells Homebrew how to build and install a specific CLI package. (Similar to a portfile, I guess?) Tap: repository of formulae, e. g. `homebrew-core` (the repository where Homebrew keeps all the core formulae) Bottle: pre-built binary package. Homebrew usually builds and hosts them for you. At install time, Homebrew downloads and uses them whenever it can so you won’t need to wait through unnecessary source builds. Cask: Represents a package that can’t be built from source. In practice, a Cask usually means something that ends with `.app`. Technically, Homebrew Cask is very much a separate package manager in itself. (You can tell by looking at the individual `brew cask` commands.) That’s because it caters to somewhat different use cases, and because it used to be a separate project before it went on to merge with Homebrew. Caskroom: directory hierarchy for Cask-related bookkeeping. Caskroom is also the name of the former organization in charge of Casks; but that’s history now given all things Cask have officially become part of Homebrew. It’s cool that MacPorts works well for you but hey, maybe try Homebrew some time to find out how you like it? (Disclosure: am one of the core maintainers.)
Spiritus 8y ago
>So you're going to periodically make maintenance changes to my system without my permission. Goodie. I suspect this is partly because the cache can consume a huge amount of disk space over time and many users might never run `brew cleanup` or doesn't even know about it. And then wonder where all their disk space has gone.
- paultopia 8y ago
  That would be a great reason to communicate with users in a prominent place in the docs. Sadly, the maintainers seem to always choose to force the user behavior that they see as desirable rather than communicate with users about it. For what is, at bottom, a developer tool this is madness.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    Isn't it that what mac is all about ? "We know better, let us do the thinking for you" ?
    - mikemcquaid 8y ago
      Not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek or not but we do try to follow the/our perceived Apple approach of "sensible defaults which take the thinking out of using the tool". This means doing things automatically for users and letting them opt-out rather than requiring them to read all our documentation to know how to avoid e.g. a bloated cache directory.
      - kstrauser 8y ago
        I appreciate it. I can RTFM and figure out how to do a million ad-hoc maintenance chores for the thousand tools I use daily, but I'd rather not have to if those tools care more or less take care of themselves.
    - crehn 8y ago
      And let's be honest, most often Apple does know what's better for the average user.
mikemcquaid 8y ago
> Especially since homebrew force-updates itself and there's no way for users to avoid these changes.[1] This is not true. `man brew` documents how to disable auto-updates. > Why exactly is this kind of purist decision being imposed on users? Because there's a lot of current debate about whether things being relicensed under the Commons Clause is "open source" or not and we'd rather lean on an established, well-documented authority on what that definition is. Additionally, part of our agreed membership of the Software Freedom Conservancy (who help us with a lot) involves ensuring our core formulae are open source software. > So you're going to periodically make maintenance changes to my system without my permission. Goodie. Again, `brew man` documents how to disable this. --- The complaint behind the individual complaints is "why doesn't Homebrew work the way I want it to". That's a reasonable complaint and there may be better tools for you to use rather than Homebrew but we're going to continue to build Homebrew to work in a way that works best for the majority of our users and avoids our (entirely voluntary) maintainers having to deal with the same issues again and again.
- dilap 8y ago
  As someone who uses homebrew religiously, but isn't familiar with the inner-workings, I'll second the sentiment that some whys on the changes would be much appreciated. Otherwise it just looks like a bunch of scary behavior changes w/o a clear upside.
  - dickeytk 8y ago
    that's a really good suggestion. As someone that writes a lot of changelogs, they would really benefit from including _why_ and not just _what_. I do think, however, that users greatly underestimate how much time it takes to write up a good changelog. Even one that is as simple as this.
    - mikemcquaid 8y ago
      Yeh, that's it in a nutshell, unfortunately. I wish I had more time to write great changelogs for Homebrew but I don't :(

jxy 8y ago

Save your time and soul. Just use MacPorts.

Mister_Snuggles 8y ago

> "brew update no longer migrates legacy keg symlinks, tap names, repository locations, cache locations or cache entries." The biggest thing that has kept me on MacPorts and away from Homebrew is that I don't understand half of the terms that they use. What is a keg? What is a tap? From the article you linked, what is a cask? What is the Caskroom? Elsewhere I've heard talk of "bottles" - what is a bottle, in this context? What are formulae?

Hackbraten 8y ago
When I started using Homebrew, I found those terms super intimidating and overly quirky but that went away quickly! Keg: a dedicated subdirectory for each installed package. Cellar: this is where the kegs are. Usually `/usr/local/Cellar`. Formula: a file that tells Homebrew how to build and install a specific CLI package. (Similar to a portfile, I guess?) Tap: repository of formulae, e. g. `homebrew-core` (the repository where Homebrew keeps all the core formulae) Bottle: pre-built binary package. Homebrew usually builds and hosts them for you. At install time, Homebrew downloads and uses them whenever it can so you won’t need to wait through unnecessary source builds. Cask: Represents a package that can’t be built from source. In practice, a Cask usually means something that ends with `.app`. Technically, Homebrew Cask is very much a separate package manager in itself. (You can tell by looking at the individual `brew cask` commands.) That’s because it caters to somewhat different use cases, and because it used to be a separate project before it went on to merge with Homebrew. Caskroom: directory hierarchy for Cask-related bookkeeping. Caskroom is also the name of the former organization in charge of Casks; but that’s history now given all things Cask have officially become part of Homebrew. It’s cool that MacPorts works well for you but hey, maybe try Homebrew some time to find out how you like it? (Disclosure: am one of the core maintainers.)

Spiritus 8y ago

>So you're going to periodically make maintenance changes to my system without my permission. Goodie. I suspect this is partly because the cache can consume a huge amount of disk space over time and many users might never run `brew cleanup` or doesn't even know about it. And then wonder where all their disk space has gone.

paultopia 8y ago
That would be a great reason to communicate with users in a prominent place in the docs. Sadly, the maintainers seem to always choose to force the user behavior that they see as desirable rather than communicate with users about it. For what is, at bottom, a developer tool this is madness.
- sametmax 8y ago
  Isn't it that what mac is all about ? "We know better, let us do the thinking for you" ?
  - mikemcquaid 8y ago
    Not sure if this is tongue-in-cheek or not but we do try to follow the/our perceived Apple approach of "sensible defaults which take the thinking out of using the tool". This means doing things automatically for users and letting them opt-out rather than requiring them to read all our documentation to know how to avoid e.g. a bloated cache directory.
    - kstrauser 8y ago
      I appreciate it. I can RTFM and figure out how to do a million ad-hoc maintenance chores for the thousand tools I use daily, but I'd rather not have to if those tools care more or less take care of themselves.
  - crehn 8y ago
    And let's be honest, most often Apple does know what's better for the average user.

mikemcquaid 8y ago

> Especially since homebrew force-updates itself and there's no way for users to avoid these changes.[1] This is not true. `man brew` documents how to disable auto-updates. > Why exactly is this kind of purist decision being imposed on users? Because there's a lot of current debate about whether things being relicensed under the Commons Clause is "open source" or not and we'd rather lean on an established, well-documented authority on what that definition is. Additionally, part of our agreed membership of the Software Freedom Conservancy (who help us with a lot) involves ensuring our core formulae are open source software. > So you're going to periodically make maintenance changes to my system without my permission. Goodie. Again, `brew man` documents how to disable this. --- The complaint behind the individual complaints is "why doesn't Homebrew work the way I want it to". That's a reasonable complaint and there may be better tools for you to use rather than Homebrew but we're going to continue to build Homebrew to work in a way that works best for the majority of our users and avoids our (entirely voluntary) maintainers having to deal with the same issues again and again.

dilap 8y ago
As someone who uses homebrew religiously, but isn't familiar with the inner-workings, I'll second the sentiment that some whys on the changes would be much appreciated. Otherwise it just looks like a bunch of scary behavior changes w/o a clear upside.
- dickeytk 8y ago
  that's a really good suggestion. As someone that writes a lot of changelogs, they would really benefit from including _why_ and not just _what_. I do think, however, that users greatly underestimate how much time it takes to write up a good changelog. Even one that is as simple as this.
  - mikemcquaid 8y ago
    Yeh, that's it in a nutshell, unfortunately. I wish I had more time to write great changelogs for Homebrew but I don't :(