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This guide is written like the homebrew people force you at gunpoint to use it. They don’t. If you don’t like homebrew’s defaults and want to write a guide on

This guide is written like the homebrew people force you at gunpoint to use it. They don’t. If you don’t like homebrew’s defaults and want to write a guide on how to change that, there’s no need to make it sound this aggressive. For most people homebrew is an easy to use solution to install software and its dependencies and keep them up to date.

manmal 4y ago
This kind of behavior is an extension of the problematic entitlement towards OSS imo. „Brew is a bad neighbor“ is not a fair description for a free (!) tool that made millions of dev lives easier.
- tomxor 4y ago
  > not a fair description for a free (!) tool that made millions of dev lives easier. I think part of the problem is for those stuck with Macs, for whatever reason - brew doesn't merely make their life as a dev easier, it makes being a dev possible - which only worsens the sense of entitlement.
  - bardworx 4y ago
    Are you implying you cannot be a dev w/o brew?
    - tomxor 4y ago
      No. I'm saying on MacOS, for certain types of development where you need BSD or GNU userland tools not included in MacOS - a package manager for installing such tools like brew is required to make life sane and workable.
      - bardworx 4y ago
        > brew doesn't merely make their life as a dev easier, it makes being a dev possible Your comment made it seemed as if there was no way to develop on a Mac before homebrew, which I think is silly. It’s just a tool. Makes your life easier but that’s it.
        tomxor 4y ago
        I've given you the clarification, I'm not willing to continue a discussion based on pedantry.
  - Razengan 4y ago
    So many assumptions in one entitled comment.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      I can't see anything entitled in the comment. What do you mean?
- kweingar 4y ago
  Pointing out the flaws in open source software is totally fair, especially when the software is popular enough to have a gravitational pull on the rest of the ecosystem. Of course, you need to be mindful not to be a jerk to the developers and maintainers, but that is different from criticizing the software. If criticism of open source software was “problematic entitlement”, then I guess we’d have to swallow our tongues when Linux, Android, Chromium, Firefox, etc. make poor decisions. After all, they’ve helped billions of users, so who are we to question them?
  - manmal 4y ago
    > you need to be mindful not to be a jerk to the developers and maintainers And you don’t think the article ticks that box?
  - acdha 4y ago
    This article is aggressive but does it really point out a flaw? It alleged a few problems but didn’t substantiate anything (doing so would likely have helped the author learn why the security point is mostly theater) and the bulk of it was describing how it was more work to use an unsupported configuration but still relatively easy because the Homebrew authors documented how to do so. That seems like an appropriate title would be “TIL: how to install Homebrew in a custom path” rather than the hyperbolic one he picked.
jchw 4y ago
It's not written as if Homebrew developers are forcing you to use it. It's written from the perspective of someone who doesn't really want to use Homebrew but still does so as a result of some decision calculus but finds it frustrating to use. If you find the tone to be too aggressive or unfriendly, that's fine. But also, in the same token, I don't think it's fair to invoke the "you don't have to use it" argument for fairly reasonable frustration. It's also not obligatory that anyone take someone's rant personally, after all.
- acdha 4y ago
  That’s a very charitable reason: this post is long on unsupported allegations starting with the title and boils down to the author not understanding security as well as he thinks and claiming it’s Homebrew’s fault that something unsupported requires more work.
  - jchw 4y ago
    Well, I find it pretty frustrating when software on my machine breaks due to namespace pollution that happened automatically and without warning. Some MSys distributions do similar things on Windows, and I find it no less agitating (To be fair, at least Homebrew doesn't generally override e.g. system utilities with GNU utilities, and is somewhat careful about it, but it nonetheless does generally require itself to be on $PATH iirc. Still, my build processes regularly pick up things like Homebrew OpenSSL completely unintentionally...) Ignoring the security issue for a moment, though, I think it is genuinely quite irritating that Homebrew doesn't support installing in a more self-contained manner. I'm not saying Homebrew developers did anything wrong to me personally or that they are obligated to work on the problem, but the other edge of that sword is that I don't have to like it either. It can be done, as shown, but it is pretty intentional about not supporting this workflow. I think that's a bummer. (P.S.: I honestly didn't really grasp exactly what they were complaining about, but if they are trying to enforce a setup where the only binaries in the default shell $PATH are in directories that are not world-writable, that really does seem like a totally valid security mitigation.)
    - 4y ago
gumby 4y ago
In fact the ranter’s “solution” works only because the homebrew team go out of their way to make sure it will work — and even document it.

manmal 4y ago

This kind of behavior is an extension of the problematic entitlement towards OSS imo. „Brew is a bad neighbor“ is not a fair description for a free (!) tool that made millions of dev lives easier.

tomxor 4y ago
> not a fair description for a free (!) tool that made millions of dev lives easier. I think part of the problem is for those stuck with Macs, for whatever reason - brew doesn't merely make their life as a dev easier, it makes being a dev possible - which only worsens the sense of entitlement.
- bardworx 4y ago
  Are you implying you cannot be a dev w/o brew?
  - tomxor 4y ago
    No. I'm saying on MacOS, for certain types of development where you need BSD or GNU userland tools not included in MacOS - a package manager for installing such tools like brew is required to make life sane and workable.
    - bardworx 4y ago
      > brew doesn't merely make their life as a dev easier, it makes being a dev possible Your comment made it seemed as if there was no way to develop on a Mac before homebrew, which I think is silly. It’s just a tool. Makes your life easier but that’s it.
      - tomxor 4y ago
        I've given you the clarification, I'm not willing to continue a discussion based on pedantry.
- Razengan 4y ago
  So many assumptions in one entitled comment.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I can't see anything entitled in the comment. What do you mean?
kweingar 4y ago
Pointing out the flaws in open source software is totally fair, especially when the software is popular enough to have a gravitational pull on the rest of the ecosystem. Of course, you need to be mindful not to be a jerk to the developers and maintainers, but that is different from criticizing the software. If criticism of open source software was “problematic entitlement”, then I guess we’d have to swallow our tongues when Linux, Android, Chromium, Firefox, etc. make poor decisions. After all, they’ve helped billions of users, so who are we to question them?
- manmal 4y ago
  > you need to be mindful not to be a jerk to the developers and maintainers And you don’t think the article ticks that box?
- acdha 4y ago
  This article is aggressive but does it really point out a flaw? It alleged a few problems but didn’t substantiate anything (doing so would likely have helped the author learn why the security point is mostly theater) and the bulk of it was describing how it was more work to use an unsupported configuration but still relatively easy because the Homebrew authors documented how to do so. That seems like an appropriate title would be “TIL: how to install Homebrew in a custom path” rather than the hyperbolic one he picked.

jchw 4y ago

It's not written as if Homebrew developers are forcing you to use it. It's written from the perspective of someone who doesn't really want to use Homebrew but still does so as a result of some decision calculus but finds it frustrating to use. If you find the tone to be too aggressive or unfriendly, that's fine. But also, in the same token, I don't think it's fair to invoke the "you don't have to use it" argument for fairly reasonable frustration. It's also not obligatory that anyone take someone's rant personally, after all.

acdha 4y ago
That’s a very charitable reason: this post is long on unsupported allegations starting with the title and boils down to the author not understanding security as well as he thinks and claiming it’s Homebrew’s fault that something unsupported requires more work.
- jchw 4y ago
  Well, I find it pretty frustrating when software on my machine breaks due to namespace pollution that happened automatically and without warning. Some MSys distributions do similar things on Windows, and I find it no less agitating (To be fair, at least Homebrew doesn't generally override e.g. system utilities with GNU utilities, and is somewhat careful about it, but it nonetheless does generally require itself to be on $PATH iirc. Still, my build processes regularly pick up things like Homebrew OpenSSL completely unintentionally...) Ignoring the security issue for a moment, though, I think it is genuinely quite irritating that Homebrew doesn't support installing in a more self-contained manner. I'm not saying Homebrew developers did anything wrong to me personally or that they are obligated to work on the problem, but the other edge of that sword is that I don't have to like it either. It can be done, as shown, but it is pretty intentional about not supporting this workflow. I think that's a bummer. (P.S.: I honestly didn't really grasp exactly what they were complaining about, but if they are trying to enforce a setup where the only binaries in the default shell $PATH are in directories that are not world-writable, that really does seem like a totally valid security mitigation.)
  - 4y ago

gumby 4y ago

In fact the ranter’s “solution” works only because the homebrew team go out of their way to make sure it will work — and even document it.