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Article author here. I think my biggest complaint is that there’s no disclaimer on the box [1]. Homebrew folks know about these problems, but they don’t warn us

Article author here. I think my biggest complaint is that there’s no disclaimer on the box [1]. Homebrew folks know about these problems, but they don’t warn users that their virtual environments will be obliterated. If Homebrew explained that these problems can happen, and that developers might want to use a different source for installing Python interpreters, my ire would be lessened considerably. [1] https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-and-Python.html https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-and-Python.html

Hamuko 6y ago
I don't think the Homebrew team cares much about UX. I still don't appreciate how pretty much all build options were deprecated.
- woodruffw 6y ago
  We actually care a great deal about UX! The decision to remove build options was informed (in part) by user experience: for every one user who was using them correctly to configure a package slightly differently for their uses, there were fifteen users following outdated SO answers and reporting their own breakages to us. Like every other package manager that distributes binary builds, we made a decision to improve the 99% use case.
woodruffw 6y ago
Hi there! I'm one of the Homebrew maintainers, albeit not a very active one for the past year or so. I agree that we could definitely improve our documentation on what people can and should expect from a Homebrewed version of Python; I'll look into opening a PR that improves these docs tonight.
- justinmayer 6y ago
  That would be really helpful. In another thread you mentioned that "individual developers will always be best served to isolate their development environments from the overarching runtime environment that's been distributed to them". I agree, but it took me way longer to figure that out than I think was necessary, precisely because the "Homebrew and Python" docs don't mention that. I imagine a lot of other developers have been similarly affected, so many thanks in advance for looking into opening a pull request to enhance the documentation.

Hamuko 6y ago

I don't think the Homebrew team cares much about UX. I still don't appreciate how pretty much all build options were deprecated.

woodruffw 6y ago
We actually care a great deal about UX! The decision to remove build options was informed (in part) by user experience: for every one user who was using them correctly to configure a package slightly differently for their uses, there were fifteen users following outdated SO answers and reporting their own breakages to us. Like every other package manager that distributes binary builds, we made a decision to improve the 99% use case.

woodruffw 6y ago

Hi there! I'm one of the Homebrew maintainers, albeit not a very active one for the past year or so. I agree that we could definitely improve our documentation on what people can and should expect from a Homebrewed version of Python; I'll look into opening a PR that improves these docs tonight.

justinmayer 6y ago
That would be really helpful. In another thread you mentioned that "individual developers will always be best served to isolate their development environments from the overarching runtime environment that's been distributed to them". I agree, but it took me way longer to figure that out than I think was necessary, precisely because the "Homebrew and Python" docs don't mention that. I imagine a lot of other developers have been similarly affected, so many thanks in advance for looking into opening a pull request to enhance the documentation.