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Huh. I've seriously used... I dunno, maybe five Linux package managers, on workstations and servers alike, plus poked at a couple others, and the only one I'd a
by gh-throw 6y ago
Huh. I've seriously used... I dunno, maybe five Linux package managers, on workstations and servers alike, plus poked at a couple others, and the only one I'd almost rather use day-to-day than Brew is Portage, but even that, probably not.
I like having the system strictly separate from my crap, and I think the UI is fairly good. The variety of packages available out-of-the-box is outstanding. I miss it when I'm on Linux, now, in a workstation-not-server context (yes, I know, there's LinuxBrew, but the package set is much smaller and less well-maintained). I started on MacPorts but got sick of it borking itself every few months such that it was faster to nuke the directory and reinstall everything than to figure out what it'd screwed up this time (granted, that was about a decade ago, maybe it's great now).
Brew gives off all kinds of signals of being something I'd hate (cutesy; a system tool written in Ruby; breaks with norms) but I like it a ton.
- cromka 6y agoYeah, let's talk about how brew still can't just remove the leftover dependencies or uninstall a package with its otherwise unused dependencies without some extra command or hacks.
- mikemcquaid 6y ago‘brew autoremove’ does this.
- geoelectric 6y agobrew might have a discoverability challenge. I've been installing an rmtree helper to do this for years and didn't even know it was an option to autoremove them.
- cromka 6y agoIs this new? I swear I searched as recently as last week and the only thing that came up was "rmtree" and the "brew bundle dump && brew bundle --force cleanup" workarounds.
- mikemcquaid 6y agoIt’s not “last month new” for sure. It was in the list of commands in the manpage last week.
- jbluepolarbear 6y agoAs a casual user I like Brew. As a long time mac developer and private cask maintainer(no longer thankfully), I wish there was something close to what the Linux ecosystem has.
- rconti 6y agoAs a casual user (install something once every 6 months), I can't even keep brew's insane terminology straight. If I was a REGULAR casual user, I'm sure it would be fine.
- Eugr 6y agoHave you tried MacPorts?
- jbluepolarbear 6y agoI tried it, but everything required sudo and that wasn’t an option at the time. I primarily develop in Windows(on a Mac) now because Unity runs much better on windows than Mac OS.
- saagarjha 6y agoYou can install MacPorts into a local directory without admin privileges.
- regulation_d 6y agoBrew consistently upgrades things that shouldn't need to be upgraded. I've spent more hours than I care to count fixing broken Postgres installations which regularly get major version bumps as a result of a completely unrelated install or upgrade. I've never used linux as a dev machine, but in general apt seems much more reasonable in this regard. My frustration with Brew is pushing me to seriously consider a linux machine, so if anybody has counterpoints here I'm definitely interested in hearing about your experiences. I don't care that Brew "breaks with norms" I just care that it breaks my shit.
- vlunkr 6y agoYes, Ubuntu/Debian are very conservative with their updates. Especially if you're on an LTS release, so you're unlikely to have something break from an upgrade like that. Brew tends to be very up-to-date.
- gh-throw 6y agoI think I must use it differently from how other people do. I use it to install tools I'll use directly, so I practically always want those to be at latest (or otherwise don't really care what version they are). If I need something at a particular version I'd use a container, or install it manually in some isolated folder, or something like that, since odds are if I need something at a particular version I'm going to need it at multiple particular versions and to be able to re-create the installation on other environments. So I end up with: System -> Apple-managed My tools, as in programs I personally use -> pretty much entirely Brew, in fact I think on my current workstation this category is 100% brew-installed Dependencies of anything I'm working on -> some language-specific version manager (which itself is may be brew-managed, actually) plus containers or VMs with scripted installs, probably. On linux my experience is typically more like: System -> package manager My tools -> package manager, plus some sketchy extra repos that I hate to add but do anyway because I don't want to screw with manually updating things, plus several things installed manually, plus a bunch of things on older versions than I'd like but not worth the trouble/risk of finding some way to upgrade without it being a PITA. Dependencies of anything I'm working on -> some language-specific version manager (almost certainly not available in the distro's official repos) plus containers or VMs with scripted installs, probably. So for my use, Brew cleans up the "My Tools" workflow very nicely compared with Linux, excepting, kind of, my days back on Portage/Gentoo, which of course has its own problems.