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Ask HN: Why is homebrew so often derided?

4 points by colinprince 5y ago

I've been using it (lightly) and it seems to work well for my purposes. Why the ill will?

gregjor 5y ago
Would help if you gave examples. I use homebrew and I’ve only seen it mentioned positively as a solution. In any case, what does it matter if other random people complain about it? Everything has detractors. If it works for you, great.
- colinprince 5y ago
  e.g., in a frontpage story today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662064
  - gregjor 5y ago
    Rando calling a popular package a “garbage fire” doesn’t count for anything.
hitpointdrew 5y ago
I have had some bad experiences with it, although I will admit it seems to be improved on this point lately. But I used to have a terrible time installing anything with a non-admin account. If tried sudo then it complained not to run it as root. This resulted in permissions hell. In general homebrew seems more buggy and less responsive and an overall a much poorer user experience when compared to apt, dnf, or pacman. Also the goofy icons it has make seem like a toy, rather than a real cli package management tool.
derbOac 5y ago
It's worked well for me but I do feel weird about its function or role on macs. Whenever I use it I'm reminded of how crufty the walled garden model is for development. I guess that makes me feel more positive about homebrew but there's an asterisk related to why I use it at all.
giantg2 5y ago
I went to my local homebrew store today. I think I'll make a smoked porter.
Normille 5y ago
Because it's so s-l-o-o-o-o-ow at doing anything
duped 5y ago
The default behavior to update everything when installing anything is bad UX, and the fact it's hidden behind an environment variable is bad design. The argument behind the behavior is divorced from reality, in my opinion. It was broken on multiuser systems for a long while, I'm not sure if that's still the case. The requirement to write your package as some ruby scripts is also a bit of a pain, compared to other package managers where you just need a small config file (if at all).

4 points by colinprince 5y ago

I've been using it (lightly) and it seems to work well for my purposes. Why the ill will?

Would help if you gave examples. I use homebrew and I’ve only seen it mentioned positively as a solution. In any case, what does it matter if other random people complain about it? Everything has detractors. If it works for you, great.

colinprince 5y ago
e.g., in a frontpage story today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29662064
- gregjor 5y ago
  Rando calling a popular package a “garbage fire” doesn’t count for anything.

hitpointdrew 5y ago

I have had some bad experiences with it, although I will admit it seems to be improved on this point lately. But I used to have a terrible time installing anything with a non-admin account. If tried sudo then it complained not to run it as root. This resulted in permissions hell. In general homebrew seems more buggy and less responsive and an overall a much poorer user experience when compared to apt, dnf, or pacman. Also the goofy icons it has make seem like a toy, rather than a real cli package management tool.

derbOac 5y ago

It's worked well for me but I do feel weird about its function or role on macs. Whenever I use it I'm reminded of how crufty the walled garden model is for development. I guess that makes me feel more positive about homebrew but there's an asterisk related to why I use it at all.

giantg2 5y ago

I went to my local homebrew store today. I think I'll make a smoked porter.

Normille 5y ago

Because it's so s-l-o-o-o-o-ow at doing anything

duped 5y ago

The default behavior to update everything when installing anything is bad UX, and the fact it's hidden behind an environment variable is bad design. The argument behind the behavior is divorced from reality, in my opinion. It was broken on multiuser systems for a long while, I'm not sure if that's still the case. The requirement to write your package as some ruby scripts is also a bit of a pain, compared to other package managers where you just need a small config file (if at all).