8 ms·

I just reached the same breaking point -- and normally I am pretty sympathetic to software jank, but the maintainer of homebrew is so actively hostile and rude

I just reached the same breaking point -- and normally I am pretty sympathetic to software jank, but the maintainer of homebrew is so actively hostile and rude that my degree of empathy is significantly less -- and switched to Nix, which is quite good, conditional on three gotchas: 1. Nix has very limited support for GUI applications of the kind that you'd find in `brew cask`. Not no support, some of them are there, but limited support compared to brew. If you use brew as an out-of-the-box install-everything setup like me, you'll not be able to replicate that easily with Nix. 2. Nix can't currently build Swift applications because of some Xcode something I didn't fully understand. 3. I found a small number of packages that are broken on Nix on my aarch64 / M1 MacBook Air (and marked broken, so when you try to install it complains) and a small number that are broken without being marked broken. In specific, I think R was one that surprised me -- this is a major programming language and although the build requirements are onerous (it's a mix of C and Fortran), I would think it would work. That being said the actual process of installing, updating, and upgrading seems much faster and dramatically less shitty than homebrew, and so I recommend migrating stuff off of brew anyway.

tikhonj 5y ago
I had R working with Nix on my work Macbook, but this was on a version of Nixpkgs from several months ago. Of course, one of the upsides with Nix is that I can look up the exact version of Nixpkgs that was working for me because it's in a git repo with the rest of my dotfiles :).
da39a3ee 5y ago
What’s an actual concrete example of a problem you have with homebrew?
- apostacy 5y ago
  I posted a detailed comment of why Homebrew is a problem for me[1] if you would like to see. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29080519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29080519
- Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
  Here's my previously posted actual concrete example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903499
- apostacy 5y ago
  I know that there are usually workarounds to these problems, but they tend to be obscure, and change frequently, and are not simple to look up. Pacman, apt, portage, etc have much more stable interfaces. But the workarounds for my edge cases in Homebrew from a year ago don't work anymore. Even knowing what is an edgecase or not is a problem. Most of these issues would be fine if the interface changed as slowly and consistently as Linux package managers.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  It’d be nice if it asked if it’s ok to remove old versions of dependencies when installing a new package. It’d also be nice for it to not upgrade, say, wireshark and nginx when installing, say, ffmpeg, without asking first.
  - chisquared 5y ago
    You might be interested in `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP` and `HOMEBREW_NO_CLEANUP_FORMULAE`. See `man brew` for details.
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      Yeah, I’m going to put those in my rc file. I’m surprised they aren’t the default options but that’s not a big deal.
      - chisquared 5y ago
        `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP` used to be the default. Many users complained about how much space Homebrew used, and were shocked by how much they saved by doing `brew cleanup`, so now it’s done by default.
vr46 5y ago
I find Mike McQuaid pretty reasonable and forthright whenever I have ever messaged him. Also, he is hardly responsible for every formula out there. For anyone who remembers the year 2000 and having to compile everything from scratch, Homebrew is brilliant - but there are complexities and quirks. For Python I’d go with pyenv. Postgres - well, watch your step and maybe use Docker instead.
- geraneum 5y ago
  For PostgreSQL on macOS I use and suggest https://postgresapp.com/ https://postgresapp.com/ which is free and able to manage multiple Postgres major versions. It's also self-contained in a folder in /Applications. Also, version 14 of Postgres in the app has m1 native support.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    For “infrastructure” apps like databases, caches, etc, I’ve been using Docker containers. Very easy to setup and tear down in a repeatable way. Unless I’m modifying the app itself, of course.
    - tarsinge 5y ago
      For me it’s the only sane way to manage multiple small projects. A few lines in a docker compose file and I’m done, no matter the Postgres/Python/Ruby/Lib or framework version, everything is isolated and reproductible. Downside is gigabytes of RAM wasted.
    - brodouevencode 5y ago
      Exactly. I have a few build tools on my machine but any service installed locally has been long gone. Even the apps I work on - I just have the code locally and compile/package it up for testing within a container, which resembles the actual production landing spot. No more "it works on my machine".
blablabla123 5y ago
I also tried Nix (as well as NixOS) but it's obviously difficult to use and has a very steep learning curve. But actually it might be the most flexible and stable package manager out there. So probably the problems mentioned can be fixed by custom configuration but that might require deep-diving into Nix and using Functional Programming for package configs... For some time I also used to just ./configure && make && make install (sometimes combined with stow) to my home dir, that worked also well but makes installing and upgrading tedious. That said, I'm sticking to Homebrew. Not really sure about this auto-upgrading, maybe it can be deactivated, on the other hand probably it's a good way to keep packages updated.
- pca006132 5y ago
  I think the problem with Nix is that it is actually not a package manager but a build tool (that provides some package management utilities). People try Nix with the assumption that it should be as easy as apt-get (for example), but found tutorials with a block of code in a weird language... Sure, you will eventually need to use the Nix language if you want to have complex and reusable configurations, but this is actually not needed for beginners! To install packages, you need the Nix package manager (with channels already setup) and use `nix-env` to install for the current user. You can just search for the package in https://search.nixos.org/packages https://search.nixos.org/packages and use the command directly. If you want to have user configurations, use home-manager, just modify the example to add other options, you seldom need complicated Nix expressions unless you need to build a package by yourself. When you really need to do so, you may want to have a look at other's build script, and make sure you understand everything in the build process, including compile dependencies and runtime dependencies, environment variables, etc. You may want to read Nix Pills at some point, but maybe you can get away with reading just the relevant section (incomplete knowledge, but usually enough to get the work done).
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > I think the problem with Nix is that it is actually not a package manager but a build tool (that provides some package management utilities). People try Nix with the assumption that it should be as easy as apt-get (for example), but found tutorials with a block of code in a weird language... Indeed, I've been using Nix for many years (on Ubuntu, NixOS and macOS), and I now find the apt-get style 'considered harmful'. Instead, I define a single Nix derivation ("package") which provides everything I want in its 'bin/' directory, e.g. with nixpkgs; buildEnv { name = "my-macbook-programs"; paths = [ bash gimp /* etc */ ]; } The nix-build command creates a symlink called `result`, so I put `/path/to/my/git/repo/result/bin` in my $PATH.
mjhoy 5y ago
I also use Nix, and agree with these caveats. My personal experience is that it can be hard to initially set up Nix, but once you do, it's rock solid. It's particularly great for sharing config across machines. Here's config for my personal dev environment for instance: https://github.com/mjhoy/dotfiles/blob/main/nix/nixpkgs/config.nix https://github.com/mjhoy/dotfiles/blob/main/nix/nixpkgs/conf...
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  I tried Nix while ago when NixOS made news in HN. You are right, it is difficult to set it up. Eventually I give up on it and tried to remove Nix from my macOS, let say it is difficult to remove Nix as well. I tried their command line to remove Nix and it didn't remove it even with sudo. Nix been sitting on my macOS for a month since it couldn't remove it completely. I realized I just have to go to Disk Utility to dismount/remove the Nix VHD and then ran the command line again which finally got it removed from my OS.
  - pxc 5y ago
    Hm, that's a good point. Removing Nix is easier on operating systems where root is root (normal Unix-likes without a lot of filesystem-related security policies enabled). Nix only uses a separate APFS volume on macOS because Apple disabled writing to /. The way that affects the uninstall process should be documented. I spotted some people who've recently worked on Nix's install scripts and uninstall procedure elsewhere on the thread. You can file an issue if you think they'll miss your comment :)
chriswarbo 5y ago
Regarding GUI applications: you're probably talking about the Nixpkgs repository, rather than the Nix tool itself. I use the following Nix function to install GUI applications https://github.com/cmacrae/.nixpkgs/blob/d4b51eb414b0edaffaeee9b926c32b118014c4fa/pkgs/apps.nix#L3 https://github.com/cmacrae/.nixpkgs/blob/d4b51eb414b0edaffae... It doesn't work for everything, but I use it at the moment for Amethyst, DBeaver, DockerDesktop, Emacs, Firefox, iTerm2, Postman, Slack and VNCViewer.
- bpye 5y ago
  This is neat! I wonder if there would be value in having a repo for only GUI applications, equivalent to casks. I suppose it works best when the application doesn’t also auto-update, which many do.
  - chriswarbo 5y ago
    > I suppose it works best when the application doesn’t also auto-update, which many do. Yes, the update prompts get annoying (auto-updaters don't work since everything's read-only). I use niv to update things, e.g. $ niv update firefox -v94.0 That will: - Update firefox's version field in nix/sources.json - Update its url field based on its template (for Firefox that's "https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/<version>/mac-EME-free/en-GB/Firefox%20<version>.dmg https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/<version>/mac-E...") - Fetch that file to the Nix store - Update firefox's sha256 field to match that file's Running nix-build will create a new system package, and the nix/sources.json changes can be committed to git.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Yes, agreed. Someone asked if there can be a progress bar on Homebrew. Instantly shutdown the thread. Homebrew is old and it needs to be replaced. It has served its time.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Homebrew is still here to stay. If Apple provide a package manager, then it likely that people will swarm to that but again it depends on how much capabilities and feature parity it have over other package managers. Microsoft is working on this with their Winget. Homebrew is great for casual and daily users since we don't have to keep hunting for software updates. And Homebrew does have a progress bar for each app. The bar is for the downloading but other than that, I don't think it need a progress bar for installtion since they are quick to install than using the GUI installation.
  - pxc 5y ago
    Winget isn't really a package manager so much as an installer wrangler and frontend for the Microsoft App store. Of the nearly 30,000 manifest files inside the winget repo, fewer than 150 of them define a single dependency. The rest run executable installers that can do basically anything, or just grab an app from the Microsoft Store. It doesn't do anything to eliminate the chaos of every program doing whatever the fuck it wants to get itself installed or create a common ecosystem of integrated packages, which are the main points of package management. Winget also lacks most of the core functionality of a package manager, including knowing how to uninstall anything at all. But uninstallation will never work reliably on winget anyway, as long as winget an installer wrangler, because installer wranglers inherit unreliable and bespoke per-package installation/uninstallation procedures from existing Windows apps. After a year and a half in public, Winget is still just Chocolatey but faster and much worse in every other respect. There's basically nothing on offer on Windows if you want a package manager instead of just some automation wrapping executable installers. (Scoop is the closest thing, and it's sort of just now swinging back from the verge of death after months in limbo.) The fact that Microsoft announced a project and called it a package manager has done more or less nothing to change that.
- 5y ago
rch 5y ago
I've just gone through the process of configuring a new MBP with nix-darwin and home-manager, and I'm sold. Keeping my MacOS and my NixOS environments in sync has been a nice bonus. I still run Homebrew for a couple of services and casks, but I'm down to less than 20 packages still installed that way. There have been a few points of friction (which I'm used to as a polyglot with lots of active projects), but the community has been very helpful with ironing those out.
- bpye 5y ago
  You can also run nixos-rebuild targeting your NixOS machine from your Mac which is a neat trick - and it’s how I update my home server.
- pxc 5y ago
  Nix-Darwin is great! I wish the Nix installer on macOS were (a) always multi-user and (b) came with Nix-Darwin, so it could be a more NixOS-like experience out of the box.
Syzygies 5y ago
When I choose tools I like to ask "Who has the hardest version of this problem? What are they using?" I'm reaching the tipping point to adopt Nix, after seeing Nix as an alternative for supporting project after project. The unstated subtext always seems to be "Nix is what the smart kids are using, but it's harder to learn." Haskell? Same religion. But the joke is that one needs a PhD in category theory to use Haskell at all, and package management has long been a Haskell sore point, yet Nix hasn't taken over. The Lean Theorem Prover? https://leanprover.github.io/lean4/doc/make/nix.html https://leanprover.github.io/lean4/doc/make/nix.html A century ago, Hilbert's program to formalize and automate mathematics was stopped in its tracks by developments in logic such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems. There is a new push involving many leading mathematicians, using the Lean theorem prover. While some imagine computers replacing people, a better model is how a chess grandmaster checks their analysis using computers. Even as the experience of observing computer Go games leads to moments of amazement, as if observing an alien tournament, the role of a human to appreciate and generalize is preserved. Primates have long used tools; our future is to coevolve with machines. Dependency hell and Gödel's incompleteness are cut of the same fabric. This is where I first read about Nix flakes.
Eugeleo 5y ago
Thanks for the summary, it is very helpful! I love Haskell and its philosophy and I'm intrigued to find that there can be some of it in a package manager as well. One question: How do you properly install things like R on the M1 Macs, then? Do you use a 'backup' package manager?

tikhonj 5y ago

I had R working with Nix on my work Macbook, but this was on a version of Nixpkgs from several months ago. Of course, one of the upsides with Nix is that I can look up the exact version of Nixpkgs that was working for me because it's in a git repo with the rest of my dotfiles :).

da39a3ee 5y ago

What’s an actual concrete example of a problem you have with homebrew?

apostacy 5y ago
I posted a detailed comment of why Homebrew is a problem for me[1] if you would like to see. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29080519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29080519
Doctor_Fegg 5y ago
Here's my previously posted actual concrete example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903499
apostacy 5y ago
I know that there are usually workarounds to these problems, but they tend to be obscure, and change frequently, and are not simple to look up. Pacman, apt, portage, etc have much more stable interfaces. But the workarounds for my edge cases in Homebrew from a year ago don't work anymore. Even knowing what is an edgecase or not is a problem. Most of these issues would be fine if the interface changed as slowly and consistently as Linux package managers.
notreallyserio 5y ago
It’d be nice if it asked if it’s ok to remove old versions of dependencies when installing a new package. It’d also be nice for it to not upgrade, say, wireshark and nginx when installing, say, ffmpeg, without asking first.
- chisquared 5y ago
  You might be interested in `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP` and `HOMEBREW_NO_CLEANUP_FORMULAE`. See `man brew` for details.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    Yeah, I’m going to put those in my rc file. I’m surprised they aren’t the default options but that’s not a big deal.
    - chisquared 5y ago
      `HOMEBREW_NO_INSTALL_CLEANUP` used to be the default. Many users complained about how much space Homebrew used, and were shocked by how much they saved by doing `brew cleanup`, so now it’s done by default.

vr46 5y ago

I find Mike McQuaid pretty reasonable and forthright whenever I have ever messaged him. Also, he is hardly responsible for every formula out there. For anyone who remembers the year 2000 and having to compile everything from scratch, Homebrew is brilliant - but there are complexities and quirks. For Python I’d go with pyenv. Postgres - well, watch your step and maybe use Docker instead.

geraneum 5y ago
For PostgreSQL on macOS I use and suggest https://postgresapp.com/ https://postgresapp.com/ which is free and able to manage multiple Postgres major versions. It's also self-contained in a folder in /Applications. Also, version 14 of Postgres in the app has m1 native support.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  For “infrastructure” apps like databases, caches, etc, I’ve been using Docker containers. Very easy to setup and tear down in a repeatable way. Unless I’m modifying the app itself, of course.
  - tarsinge 5y ago
    For me it’s the only sane way to manage multiple small projects. A few lines in a docker compose file and I’m done, no matter the Postgres/Python/Ruby/Lib or framework version, everything is isolated and reproductible. Downside is gigabytes of RAM wasted.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    Exactly. I have a few build tools on my machine but any service installed locally has been long gone. Even the apps I work on - I just have the code locally and compile/package it up for testing within a container, which resembles the actual production landing spot. No more "it works on my machine".

blablabla123 5y ago

I also tried Nix (as well as NixOS) but it's obviously difficult to use and has a very steep learning curve. But actually it might be the most flexible and stable package manager out there. So probably the problems mentioned can be fixed by custom configuration but that might require deep-diving into Nix and using Functional Programming for package configs... For some time I also used to just ./configure && make && make install (sometimes combined with stow) to my home dir, that worked also well but makes installing and upgrading tedious. That said, I'm sticking to Homebrew. Not really sure about this auto-upgrading, maybe it can be deactivated, on the other hand probably it's a good way to keep packages updated.

pca006132 5y ago
I think the problem with Nix is that it is actually not a package manager but a build tool (that provides some package management utilities). People try Nix with the assumption that it should be as easy as apt-get (for example), but found tutorials with a block of code in a weird language... Sure, you will eventually need to use the Nix language if you want to have complex and reusable configurations, but this is actually not needed for beginners! To install packages, you need the Nix package manager (with channels already setup) and use `nix-env` to install for the current user. You can just search for the package in https://search.nixos.org/packages https://search.nixos.org/packages and use the command directly. If you want to have user configurations, use home-manager, just modify the example to add other options, you seldom need complicated Nix expressions unless you need to build a package by yourself. When you really need to do so, you may want to have a look at other's build script, and make sure you understand everything in the build process, including compile dependencies and runtime dependencies, environment variables, etc. You may want to read Nix Pills at some point, but maybe you can get away with reading just the relevant section (incomplete knowledge, but usually enough to get the work done).
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  > I think the problem with Nix is that it is actually not a package manager but a build tool (that provides some package management utilities). People try Nix with the assumption that it should be as easy as apt-get (for example), but found tutorials with a block of code in a weird language... Indeed, I've been using Nix for many years (on Ubuntu, NixOS and macOS), and I now find the apt-get style 'considered harmful'. Instead, I define a single Nix derivation ("package") which provides everything I want in its 'bin/' directory, e.g. with nixpkgs; buildEnv { name = "my-macbook-programs"; paths = [ bash gimp /* etc */ ]; } The nix-build command creates a symlink called `result`, so I put `/path/to/my/git/repo/result/bin` in my $PATH.

mjhoy 5y ago

I also use Nix, and agree with these caveats. My personal experience is that it can be hard to initially set up Nix, but once you do, it's rock solid. It's particularly great for sharing config across machines. Here's config for my personal dev environment for instance: https://github.com/mjhoy/dotfiles/blob/main/nix/nixpkgs/config.nix https://github.com/mjhoy/dotfiles/blob/main/nix/nixpkgs/conf...

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
I tried Nix while ago when NixOS made news in HN. You are right, it is difficult to set it up. Eventually I give up on it and tried to remove Nix from my macOS, let say it is difficult to remove Nix as well. I tried their command line to remove Nix and it didn't remove it even with sudo. Nix been sitting on my macOS for a month since it couldn't remove it completely. I realized I just have to go to Disk Utility to dismount/remove the Nix VHD and then ran the command line again which finally got it removed from my OS.
- pxc 5y ago
  Hm, that's a good point. Removing Nix is easier on operating systems where root is root (normal Unix-likes without a lot of filesystem-related security policies enabled). Nix only uses a separate APFS volume on macOS because Apple disabled writing to /. The way that affects the uninstall process should be documented. I spotted some people who've recently worked on Nix's install scripts and uninstall procedure elsewhere on the thread. You can file an issue if you think they'll miss your comment :)

chriswarbo 5y ago

Regarding GUI applications: you're probably talking about the Nixpkgs repository, rather than the Nix tool itself. I use the following Nix function to install GUI applications https://github.com/cmacrae/.nixpkgs/blob/d4b51eb414b0edaffaeee9b926c32b118014c4fa/pkgs/apps.nix#L3 https://github.com/cmacrae/.nixpkgs/blob/d4b51eb414b0edaffae... It doesn't work for everything, but I use it at the moment for Amethyst, DBeaver, DockerDesktop, Emacs, Firefox, iTerm2, Postman, Slack and VNCViewer.

bpye 5y ago
This is neat! I wonder if there would be value in having a repo for only GUI applications, equivalent to casks. I suppose it works best when the application doesn’t also auto-update, which many do.
- chriswarbo 5y ago
  > I suppose it works best when the application doesn’t also auto-update, which many do. Yes, the update prompts get annoying (auto-updaters don't work since everything's read-only). I use niv to update things, e.g. $ niv update firefox -v94.0 That will: - Update firefox's version field in nix/sources.json - Update its url field based on its template (for Firefox that's "https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/<version>/mac-EME-free/en-GB/Firefox%20<version>.dmg https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/<version>/mac-E...") - Fetch that file to the Nix store - Update firefox's sha256 field to match that file's Running nix-build will create a new system package, and the nix/sources.json changes can be committed to git.

systemvoltage 5y ago

Yes, agreed. Someone asked if there can be a progress bar on Homebrew. Instantly shutdown the thread. Homebrew is old and it needs to be replaced. It has served its time.

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
Homebrew is still here to stay. If Apple provide a package manager, then it likely that people will swarm to that but again it depends on how much capabilities and feature parity it have over other package managers. Microsoft is working on this with their Winget. Homebrew is great for casual and daily users since we don't have to keep hunting for software updates. And Homebrew does have a progress bar for each app. The bar is for the downloading but other than that, I don't think it need a progress bar for installtion since they are quick to install than using the GUI installation.
- pxc 5y ago
  Winget isn't really a package manager so much as an installer wrangler and frontend for the Microsoft App store. Of the nearly 30,000 manifest files inside the winget repo, fewer than 150 of them define a single dependency. The rest run executable installers that can do basically anything, or just grab an app from the Microsoft Store. It doesn't do anything to eliminate the chaos of every program doing whatever the fuck it wants to get itself installed or create a common ecosystem of integrated packages, which are the main points of package management. Winget also lacks most of the core functionality of a package manager, including knowing how to uninstall anything at all. But uninstallation will never work reliably on winget anyway, as long as winget an installer wrangler, because installer wranglers inherit unreliable and bespoke per-package installation/uninstallation procedures from existing Windows apps. After a year and a half in public, Winget is still just Chocolatey but faster and much worse in every other respect. There's basically nothing on offer on Windows if you want a package manager instead of just some automation wrapping executable installers. (Scoop is the closest thing, and it's sort of just now swinging back from the verge of death after months in limbo.) The fact that Microsoft announced a project and called it a package manager has done more or less nothing to change that.
5y ago

rch 5y ago

I've just gone through the process of configuring a new MBP with nix-darwin and home-manager, and I'm sold. Keeping my MacOS and my NixOS environments in sync has been a nice bonus. I still run Homebrew for a couple of services and casks, but I'm down to less than 20 packages still installed that way. There have been a few points of friction (which I'm used to as a polyglot with lots of active projects), but the community has been very helpful with ironing those out.

bpye 5y ago
You can also run nixos-rebuild targeting your NixOS machine from your Mac which is a neat trick - and it’s how I update my home server.
pxc 5y ago
Nix-Darwin is great! I wish the Nix installer on macOS were (a) always multi-user and (b) came with Nix-Darwin, so it could be a more NixOS-like experience out of the box.

Syzygies 5y ago

When I choose tools I like to ask "Who has the hardest version of this problem? What are they using?" I'm reaching the tipping point to adopt Nix, after seeing Nix as an alternative for supporting project after project. The unstated subtext always seems to be "Nix is what the smart kids are using, but it's harder to learn." Haskell? Same religion. But the joke is that one needs a PhD in category theory to use Haskell at all, and package management has long been a Haskell sore point, yet Nix hasn't taken over. The Lean Theorem Prover? https://leanprover.github.io/lean4/doc/make/nix.html https://leanprover.github.io/lean4/doc/make/nix.html A century ago, Hilbert's program to formalize and automate mathematics was stopped in its tracks by developments in logic such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems. There is a new push involving many leading mathematicians, using the Lean theorem prover. While some imagine computers replacing people, a better model is how a chess grandmaster checks their analysis using computers. Even as the experience of observing computer Go games leads to moments of amazement, as if observing an alien tournament, the role of a human to appreciate and generalize is preserved. Primates have long used tools; our future is to coevolve with machines. Dependency hell and Gödel's incompleteness are cut of the same fabric. This is where I first read about Nix flakes.

Eugeleo 5y ago

Thanks for the summary, it is very helpful! I love Haskell and its philosophy and I'm intrigued to find that there can be some of it in a package manager as well. One question: How do you properly install things like R on the M1 Macs, then? Do you use a 'backup' package manager?