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My experience is that both (Macports, Homebrew) are comically unreliable and frustrating to use. That said, with my insistence to install under $HOME, Macports

My experience is that both (Macports, Homebrew) are comically unreliable and frustrating to use. That said, with my insistence to install under $HOME, Macports seems to work slightly better. But truly, I got the best results from downloading and compiling every single flipping dependency myself.

da39a3ee 5y ago
Homebrew isn’t unreliable — I’ve used it for more than a decade with no problem. What’s an actual problem you have with it? Perhaps others here could help you.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  I've never had a problem with Macports and am wondering exactly the same thing. "Comically unreliable"?!
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  There is no help for problems such as how the main developers seriously thought it was fine to have a user account own a shared system directory for many years, until Apple finally just took control over that at the OS level and forced them to figure out some marginally less borken arrangement. Macports is a tougher sell for an average user today simply because the disparity in popularity means macports library is smaller and older. But macports is engineered more correctly.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > until Apple finally just took control over that at the OS level and forced them to figure out some marginally less borken arrangement. This was my biggest complaint about Homebrew. Does it mean it was finally fixed?
    - da39a3ee 5y ago
      It seems to install into /opt/homebrew/ now, whereas previously it used /usr/local.
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        That’s progress.
- asdf_snar 5y ago
  I'll repeat what others have said above, but perhaps with more emphasis on the layperson's perspective. I think I started using homebrew some 4+ years ago. I have no idea what a cask, tap, pour, or whatever is. At first things "just worked" and it was great. Then came the couple of afternoons where I had an important project to finish, and I had to upgrade X. I think once it was matplotlib (for which I had to upgrade pip? ... I can't remember) or something silly like that. Everything broke, I had to reinstall all my python packages (that's when I moved to pyenv), and I did not finish my work on time. There was probably an easier way, but I was (am) a newb and I didn't know how. I remember brew was one of the first command line utilities I ever used and thought, "woah, that was easy _and_ cool!", but I no longer think I am the target audience. Someone might say the onus is on me to learn more about the tools I use, and they are probably right. I need to know my .tmux.conf or .zshrc or whatever to get the most out of those, too, and sometimes I like to dive in. For the most part, I just want to Get On With My Work and be oblivious. If you could provide some guidance, I would genuinely be grateful. For a newbie like myself, when I see comments like "just set HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1" and then back and forth on why that does and doesn't work, I decide I don't have time for this today and cross my fingers I don't need to brew install anything in the near future. And if I do, I will probably avoid it (because it will take, I don't know, hours?).
  - bpiche 5y ago
    The cask project supports large binaries and projects whose licenses are a little more poisonous than your standard brew libs. tap as far as I can tell is basically the same as PPA extensions in linux, it lets you install stuff from external repo lists. PPAs were pretty standard fare when I used to use linux more often, maybe working with package managers in your distro of choice for a while will help. In practice you usually don't need to use either cask or tap 99% of the time.
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    Thanks. I agree the onus shouldn't be on you to figure out how to do sophisticated things, and it should basically just work without breaking your system. However! You shouldn't be using your system package manager to install Python dependencies! As you know, since you moved to pyenv. But I don't think it's fair to blame homebrew for getting you into trouble when doing that; one also wouldn't use apt to manage python packages. In fact if you look at this thread, many supposed problems with homebrew seem to be in fact problems with python package management. It's the same with all languages isn't it -- ruby and rbenv and gem, node and nvm and npm, rust and cargo. As soon as you start actually installing 3rd-party dependencies, you're better off using something language-specific to install the interpreter / compiler / toolchain, better than using homebrew or apt etc.
mdaniel 5y ago
> But truly, I got the best results from downloading and compiling every single flipping dependency myself. My experience has been that very, very rarely is any installation as straightforward as "curl && ./configure && make PREFIX=whatever install", partially due to everyone in the known universe thinking they need some awesome new build system, partially due to unknown dependencies and their versions, partially due to it usually needing some patches because they only build on the author's machine, and all of that is just noise when I just want to have something running The value of Homebrew to me are the constantly bumped formulae descriptors, definitely, 100% NOT the "brew" frontend for it. So, I've found a nice middle-ground by switching Homebrew into developer mode and neutering its bottle system and using "--build-from-source" This isn't necessarily to lobby you, as much as "for your consideration" and to raise awareness for others that one need not throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the brew frontend is user-hostle
- BruceEel 5y ago
  > My experience has been that very, very rarely is any installation as straightforward as "curl && ./configure && make PREFIX=whatever install", partially due to everyone in the known universe thinking they need some awesome new build system [...] Aye, This is particularly impacting when the build system itself needs to be eh built. > The value of Homebrew to me are the constantly bumped formulae descriptors, definitely, 100% NOT the "brew" frontend for it. [...] and using "--build-from-source" I hadn't thought about that and I suspect you are right. Although I lack recent exposure to it and I can certainly recall getting very annoyed by it, I have to say that my experience with Gentoo's Portage/emerge is by far the least unpleasant as dealing with package managers goes.

da39a3ee 5y ago

Homebrew isn’t unreliable — I’ve used it for more than a decade with no problem. What’s an actual problem you have with it? Perhaps others here could help you.

yesenadam 5y ago
I've never had a problem with Macports and am wondering exactly the same thing. "Comically unreliable"?!
Brian_K_White 5y ago
There is no help for problems such as how the main developers seriously thought it was fine to have a user account own a shared system directory for many years, until Apple finally just took control over that at the OS level and forced them to figure out some marginally less borken arrangement. Macports is a tougher sell for an average user today simply because the disparity in popularity means macports library is smaller and older. But macports is engineered more correctly.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > until Apple finally just took control over that at the OS level and forced them to figure out some marginally less borken arrangement. This was my biggest complaint about Homebrew. Does it mean it was finally fixed?
  - da39a3ee 5y ago
    It seems to install into /opt/homebrew/ now, whereas previously it used /usr/local.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      That’s progress.
asdf_snar 5y ago
I'll repeat what others have said above, but perhaps with more emphasis on the layperson's perspective. I think I started using homebrew some 4+ years ago. I have no idea what a cask, tap, pour, or whatever is. At first things "just worked" and it was great. Then came the couple of afternoons where I had an important project to finish, and I had to upgrade X. I think once it was matplotlib (for which I had to upgrade pip? ... I can't remember) or something silly like that. Everything broke, I had to reinstall all my python packages (that's when I moved to pyenv), and I did not finish my work on time. There was probably an easier way, but I was (am) a newb and I didn't know how. I remember brew was one of the first command line utilities I ever used and thought, "woah, that was easy _and_ cool!", but I no longer think I am the target audience. Someone might say the onus is on me to learn more about the tools I use, and they are probably right. I need to know my .tmux.conf or .zshrc or whatever to get the most out of those, too, and sometimes I like to dive in. For the most part, I just want to Get On With My Work and be oblivious. If you could provide some guidance, I would genuinely be grateful. For a newbie like myself, when I see comments like "just set HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1" and then back and forth on why that does and doesn't work, I decide I don't have time for this today and cross my fingers I don't need to brew install anything in the near future. And if I do, I will probably avoid it (because it will take, I don't know, hours?).
- bpiche 5y ago
  The cask project supports large binaries and projects whose licenses are a little more poisonous than your standard brew libs. tap as far as I can tell is basically the same as PPA extensions in linux, it lets you install stuff from external repo lists. PPAs were pretty standard fare when I used to use linux more often, maybe working with package managers in your distro of choice for a while will help. In practice you usually don't need to use either cask or tap 99% of the time.
- da39a3ee 5y ago
  Thanks. I agree the onus shouldn't be on you to figure out how to do sophisticated things, and it should basically just work without breaking your system. However! You shouldn't be using your system package manager to install Python dependencies! As you know, since you moved to pyenv. But I don't think it's fair to blame homebrew for getting you into trouble when doing that; one also wouldn't use apt to manage python packages. In fact if you look at this thread, many supposed problems with homebrew seem to be in fact problems with python package management. It's the same with all languages isn't it -- ruby and rbenv and gem, node and nvm and npm, rust and cargo. As soon as you start actually installing 3rd-party dependencies, you're better off using something language-specific to install the interpreter / compiler / toolchain, better than using homebrew or apt etc.

mdaniel 5y ago

> But truly, I got the best results from downloading and compiling every single flipping dependency myself. My experience has been that very, very rarely is any installation as straightforward as "curl && ./configure && make PREFIX=whatever install", partially due to everyone in the known universe thinking they need some awesome new build system, partially due to unknown dependencies and their versions, partially due to it usually needing some patches because they only build on the author's machine, and all of that is just noise when I just want to have something running The value of Homebrew to me are the constantly bumped formulae descriptors, definitely, 100% NOT the "brew" frontend for it. So, I've found a nice middle-ground by switching Homebrew into developer mode and neutering its bottle system and using "--build-from-source" This isn't necessarily to lobby you, as much as "for your consideration" and to raise awareness for others that one need not throw the baby out with the bathwater just because the brew frontend is user-hostle

BruceEel 5y ago
> My experience has been that very, very rarely is any installation as straightforward as "curl && ./configure && make PREFIX=whatever install", partially due to everyone in the known universe thinking they need some awesome new build system [...] Aye, This is particularly impacting when the build system itself needs to be eh built. > The value of Homebrew to me are the constantly bumped formulae descriptors, definitely, 100% NOT the "brew" frontend for it. [...] and using "--build-from-source" I hadn't thought about that and I suspect you are right. Although I lack recent exposure to it and I can certainly recall getting very annoyed by it, I have to say that my experience with Gentoo's Portage/emerge is by far the least unpleasant as dealing with package managers goes.