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I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems l

I decided to try this when I got a new Macbook recently. There are a few hiccups: - Firefox simply does not work in macos after switching accounts. This seems like a completely unacceptable bug, but it has apparently existed for years. - home brew does not seem to expect to be used by two users, so I've had to switch into my personal account to use it. - configuring my os, shell, browser, etc now requires doing everything twice. So it's not a perfect solution, but overall it's worth the effort.

spijdar 6y ago
For anyone interested, the problem with homebrew is it relies on "/usr/local" being owned by the current user to allow installing software without needing a password every time you invoke "brew". Naturally this requires you only use that user to invoke homebrew. Macports does things in a more conventional way, requiring sudo to elevate privileges to root before installing software, but should also work properly on a multi-user system, whereas homebrew sort of assumes a single-user install. (I think homebrew has some capacity for being used multi-user -- years back my CS professor had a lab of macs and managed to get this working I believe)
- Hackbraten 6y ago
  I’ve had good results with the following method: https://gist.github.com/claui/ada85e696029cfa8cba9b91723ce2e5b https://gist.github.com/claui/ada85e696029cfa8cba9b91723ce2e...
- Symbiote 6y ago
  I don't use a Mac, but couldn't you put both users in the same Unix group, set group-write permissions, and set the setGId bit if it's not the default group of both users (chmod g+w -R /usr/local; find /usr/local -type d -exec chmod g+s '{}' \;) ?
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Could you do you something like alias brew='sudo -u personalaccount brew'
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I know it's not a novel complaint but a really dislike this about homebrew, and I think it should be reason enough to opt for Macports if you need a macOS package manager. It's just so fragrantly violating the Unix model.
kccqzy 6y ago
It's possible to configure Homebrew to only install stuff in your home folder. But you do need a "manual" installation to achieve it. I have done it.

spijdar 6y ago

For anyone interested, the problem with homebrew is it relies on "/usr/local" being owned by the current user to allow installing software without needing a password every time you invoke "brew". Naturally this requires you only use that user to invoke homebrew. Macports does things in a more conventional way, requiring sudo to elevate privileges to root before installing software, but should also work properly on a multi-user system, whereas homebrew sort of assumes a single-user install. (I think homebrew has some capacity for being used multi-user -- years back my CS professor had a lab of macs and managed to get this working I believe)

Hackbraten 6y ago
I’ve had good results with the following method: https://gist.github.com/claui/ada85e696029cfa8cba9b91723ce2e5b https://gist.github.com/claui/ada85e696029cfa8cba9b91723ce2e...
Symbiote 6y ago
I don't use a Mac, but couldn't you put both users in the same Unix group, set group-write permissions, and set the setGId bit if it's not the default group of both users (chmod g+w -R /usr/local; find /usr/local -type d -exec chmod g+s '{}' \;) ?
im3w1l 6y ago
Could you do you something like alias brew='sudo -u personalaccount brew'
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I know it's not a novel complaint but a really dislike this about homebrew, and I think it should be reason enough to opt for Macports if you need a macOS package manager. It's just so fragrantly violating the Unix model.

kccqzy 6y ago

It's possible to configure Homebrew to only install stuff in your home folder. But you do need a "manual" installation to achieve it. I have done it.